


'*^* 4 
V-0^ 












.'^^ 






^^p; .^°""^-. ''.^fe^^° ,^^°- '^^M; r,^''^^^ V 

^ PlV •• . 'V 










, O "^n. Cp 



0-' 



^P-^^. - 
















< o 






BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



THE SONG OF OUR SYRIAN GUEST 

THE LOVE WATCH 

SAINT ABIGAIL OF THE PINES 

THE SIGNS IN THE CHRISTMAS FIRE 

THE SHEPHERD OF JEBEL NUR 

NO ROOM IN THE INN 

THE SONG OF OUR SYRIAN GUEST (with notes) 

PETER IN THE FIRELIGHT 

AT THE CROSSING WITH DENIS McSHANE 

OUTSIDE A CITY WALL 

ON THE WAY TO BETHLEHEM 

TO LITTLE DAVID OF SMYRNA 

A BEDOUIN LOVER 

THE WELL BY BETHLEHEM'S GATE 

THE PICTURELAND OF THE HEART 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 



WAR-TIME OVER HERE 



WILLIAM ALLEN KNIGHT 

Author of 
" The Song of Our Syrian Guest " 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON CHICAGO 



\ 



r^^ 



Copyright 1918 
Bt WILLIAM ALLEN KNIGHT 



Copyright in England 



All Rights Reserved 
PubUshed 1918 



APR 30 1918 



THE PILGEIM PRESS 
BOSTON 



)Ci.A497134 



TO 

StPtttrnant (titan BpaJtlpg 
an& d^nr (Btxixnht 

MARRIED, DECEMBER X 
MCMXVII 



▼ii 



AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 



These sketches have been written from day to 
day throughout the time of America's prepara- 
tion for the part she is now beginning to play in 
the drama of world war. When the President at 
last severed diplomatic relations with Germany, 
" Two Voices " was published while the news 
was on every lip. Soon a group of Grammar 
School children, of various race stocks and 
strangers to me, rendered this " piece in the 
paper " in a manner that awed me. Their 
American hearts understood! Thereupon I re- 
solved to do my best to interpret for our people 
the deeper meanings of the things that were to 
follow. . The reception given many of the com- 
positions thus put forth, as they appeared edi- 
torially in the Boston Herald, sustains my hope 
that friends who have wished to see some of them 
gathered into a book are not mistaken. To- 
gether they make a story — a story of the heart 
and soul of Anaerica at a time which will be il- 
lumined by the reverence of generations to come. 
The rapidly shifting phases of public affairs, as 
the nation moved with inexperienced and often 
confused action toward its task of destinv, are 



AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 

here touched upon one by one, and always on the 
human side of their significance. This httle 
book witnesses to the spirit I have seen in our 
people as they faced the abhorred but now im- 
perative ordeal of war. 

W. A. K. 



CONTENTS 



pxaa 

I A Guest's Forecast 3 

II Two Voices 6 

III " We Can Do No Other " 10 

IV War's Wonder Works 13 

V Paying for Our Soul's Desire 16 

VI Poor Richard's Vindication 19 

VII " Arms and a Man " 22 

VIII A Seer on a Street Car 24 

IX A Living God 28 

X The Victory of the Cheerful 31 

XI The Spirit of " Strike-the-Ree " 34 

XII Nero's Folly Brought Down to Date 37 

XIII The War and the Coming MiUions 39 

XIV To the Legion of the Cheerful 43 

XV The Nugget in the Road 46 

XVI Patriots as of Old 49 

XVII The Rambler Rose 51 

XVIII The Draft Day 63 

XIX After the Draft Day 56 

XX The Draft Seen in Larger Light 58 

XXI Hollyhocks 61 

XXII The First Home-Coming 64 

XXIII A Sentence That Will Live 67 

XXIV " Carry On " 69 

XXV The Men Behind the Marchers 72 

XXVI The Blessing of Books 76 

xi 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XXVII "They also Serve Who only Stand 

and Wait " 77 

XXVIII Tire Punctures Ahead 80 

XXIX Roosevelt's Single Eye 83 

XXX " Where There Is No Vision " 85 

XXXI " Somewhere m France " 88 

XXXII Thankfulness as a Fine Art 91 

XXXIII Jerusalem in War Light 93 

XXXIV The Women at Home 96 

XXXV The Pair on the Mall 98 

XXXVI London Bridge 101 

XXXVII Light Your Christmas Candles 107 

XXXVIII A Christmas Song 109 

XXXIX As Years Pass 110 

XL Jacob's Ladder in To-day's News 112 

XLI The Mystery of the Smoking Ledge .... 115 

XLII Enter New Actors on an Ancient Stage 118 

XLIII A Text for the Times 121 

XLIV " Be Not Weary in Bad Doing " . . . . 124 

XLV Our Benefactor — The Sun 127 

XLVI " But Peter FoUov/ed " . 130 

XLVII " Deep Calleth unto Deep " 133 

XLVIII Rising to the Heroic Mood 136 

XLIX The Service Flag 139 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 



WAR-TIME '*OVER HERE" 



A GUEST'S FORECAST 

It is New Year's Day — the world is crashing 
into " the year of our Lord 1917." What will 
this year bring to pass? Lord Kitchener's seem- 
ingly unbelievable expectation that the war would 
last three years will be fulfilled in this year's mid- 
summer. And the end is not in sight. Will this 
year bring any sign of the war's outcome? 
America will make answer. 

On the first Christmas of this war we had 
a guest never seen before nor since. He was a 
German of towering stature and powerful men- 
tality. Accredited by his family's great kindness 
to one dear to us, he was cordially welcomed in 
spite of war's predicaments for so marked a man. 
The freedom of such hospitality warranted the 
following conversation: 

" Johann, won't you tell us your view of the 
war? " 

" I would go tomorrow to fight for the father- 
land — if I only could." 

" Certainlj^; but I wish I might know what 
you really think about the outcome of it all." 
3 



WAR-TIME " OVER HERE " 

There was a pause. Then, with a straight 
gaze at his host, the stalwart young German 
said: " Germany cannot win." 

" Is that understood at home — among men 
like your father, I mean? " 

" Yes — absolutely, it is." 

" Why do you think Germany cannot win, 
Johann? " 

" Too many against her." 

" What will be the outcome, then? " 

" They cannot crush her, either." 

" Well, what do you expect — a stalemate, a 
draw? " 

" Ah, nein, mein Herr! " was the solemn reply. 
" They will — what is that word — shtarve? 
They will bring her to nothing left." 

" Do you mean cut off her food supplies? " 

" It may be so — but I think we can manage 
that a long time; but metals, petroleum for gaso- 
hne — all such things without which we can not 
fight — they will shtarve us for such things, by 
and by — not soon, but by and by. Of food 
they may shtarve us only if our crops fail, and 
then " — he paused, but presently went on — 
" and then your country becomes no longer neu- 
tral — joins our enemies." 

" Johann, do Germans at home — men like 
your civiHan father — think as you do about 
America's part in determining the outcome ?" 

" We know that we can stay in the game until 
America shakes the dice-box — and throws 
4 



A GUEST'S FORECAST 

against us. That will end the playing of the 
game for us." 

The great question now is, How much longer 
will the war last? This German forecast seems 
worth repeating in answer to that question. For 
America is now shaking the dice-box. 



11 

TWO VOICES 

" The United States is again the great republic of Lincoln 
and Washington." — A Madrid newspaper, when the Presi- 
dent severed diplomatic relations with Germany, Febru- 
ary 3. 

Heard you two voices from our winter skies, 
Serene above the world's embattled roar ? 

What time I hearkened, held in rapt surprise, 
There came a peace I had not found before. 

FIRST VOICE 

Come, let us watch together — come! 

SECOND VOICE 

It is the month in which we two were born 
On yonder globe, in that far-spreading land. 
How strange that through these peaceful years 

for us 
Those new-born millions keep our natal days — 
Recall the words we spoke in bygone times 
To guide them row, amid their vaster life! 
Strange, too, that he who stands in our old place 
Shall speak the fateful word in this same month! 

FIRST VOICE 

Come, let us watch together, friend! 
6 



TWO VOICES 

The voices hushed. Meanwhile the shocks of 
war 
Went crashing through the pulsing hearts of 
men. 
A patient voice on earth rang out afar! 
And then I heard the voices twain again. 

FIRST VOICE 

See, how in bloody clench all Europe writhes! 
And Asia's outcry sweeps the westward sea! 

SECOND VOICE 

We Httle knew in those old days of ours, 
When we upbore our country's sacred life, 
What huger struggle would engulf it now. 
Marked you whence came that patient, mighty 

voice? 
God keep the man who holds our place today! 

Once more earth's fury raged — the voices stilled. 

The stars were dimmed while heaven's snow- 
flakes fell. 
At length these words the upper silence filled — 

/ listened, and my spirit marked them well. 

FIRST VOICE 

Ah, how I strove to set our young land free — 
And then, to keep its life forever safe 
From Europe's ancient, dire entanglements! 
But now — I see it can no longer be ; 
7 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

The nation I established, you preserved, 
Has grown too great to live henceforth alone! 



SECOND VOICE 

The world awaits the touch of freemen's power - 
Its human might of words and acts that glow 
With scorn of racial hate and hoary wrongs. 



FIRST VOICE 

The Father of us all on yonder throne, 

Who once through me made free our new-born 

land 
And kept it whole for freedom's sake through 

you, 

Now wills that it shall speak with might for 

Him, 
To end war's slavery for all the world. 



SECOND VOICE 

Oh, will they wake and stand like freemen still — 
Those millions thriving all from coast to coast? 
I well remember even yet how oft, 
When war imperilled our dear country's life, 
I pondered how you prayed at Valley Forge. 
Will they remember now your prayers, and 

mine — 
Recall what kept us right and made us strong? 
Will he remember who now holds our place? 
8 



TWO VOICES 



FIRST VOICE 



Come, we may pray for them together, now — 
May go and stand for them by heaven's throne! 

So heard I voices from the ivinter skies. 
Serene above the ivorld's embattled roar. 

And while I listened, held in rapt surprise, 
There came a peace I sought in vain before. 



Ill 

" WE CAN DO NO OTHER " 

On April 2 the President addressed Congress 
in special session, calling for a declaration of war 
against Germany. The Senate so voted on the 
4th, the House on the 6th, the President sign- 
ing the declaration on the same day, which was 
Good Friday. In the spirit of Calvary we took 
up our Cross! 

" God helping her," thus the President ended 
the fateful utterance that would throw our coun- 
try into the world war, " God helping her, she 
can do no other." And those are the very words 
of an immortal German! — " Ich kann nicht 
anders! Gott helf mir, Amen! " 

Surely the President's scholarly mind was 
fully aware whence came those words with which 
he crowned his august pronouncement. Surely, 
in choosing them at such a historic climax of 
speech, he deliberately meant to show venera- 
tion for the true spirit of the German people as 
the modern world has known it. Here is some- 
thing too significant, too delicately noble to be 
overlooked amid war's awakening uproar. 

The President's kind and even fond thought 

of the German people was clear and persistent 

throughout his momentous address calUng for a 

declaration of war on their intolerable govern- 

10 



"WE CAN DO NO OTHER" 

ment. In these last words that fell from his hps, 
he paid tribute to the German folk-soul, as if to 
crown all he had said with good will. It is so 
deftly done that it is all the more a high token 
of sincerity. 

Our German fellow-citizens will do well to take 
to heart such tokens of the spirit that is in this 
nation as we go to war with Germany. As the 
President is careful to emphasize, we enter the 
conflict " not in enmity towards a people or with 
desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon 
them, but only in armed opposition to an irre- 
sponsible government which has thrown aside 
all consideration of humanity and of right and 
is running amuck." To that discriminating de- 
cision of this nation all who live here will do well 
to conform with absolute fidelity. They who 
are of German blood may find great aid in so 
doing in the President's abounding care to voice 
the high friendship of our people for the people 
of Germany. And all the rest of us should keep 
before our eyes his declaration, " We shall, hap- 
pily, still have opportunity to prove that friend- 
ship in our daily attitude and actions toward 
men and women of German birth and native 
sympathy who live amongst us and share our 
life." 

But this in no way implies soft-handed pro- 
cedure from this day forward. These German 
words throb on our lips with their original pas- 
sion — defiance of wrong insufferable, unflinch- 
11 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

ing resolve to face and overpower it at all costs. 
We, too, will go forward " though there be as 
many devils in Germany as tiles on the house- 
tops." 

Both our good will and our grimly inevitable 
action can best be viewed by all, here at home and 
across the sea, through those last words of the 
President's call to war, when, with fine discern- 
ment and gracious but herculean poise, he gath- 
ered up the spirit of this nation into the words 
of a German — " We can do no other; God help 
us." 



12 



IV 
WAR'S WONDER WORKS 

Some of war's marvels come to pass so silently 
and in such widely sundered outreaches of human 
life that the mind must focus its vision to discern 
them amid more obvious affairs. 

" Isabelle was to have been married in June, 
you know," so reads many a letter in the mail- 
bags these mid-April days, " but her fianc6 re- 
ceived word to hold himself ready to be called 
out, and — there was a quiet little wedding at 
our house last night! You will understand why 
you did not receive an invitation. Nobody did." 
Maiden hearts are roused from ecstasies of 
preparation to sudden resoluteness of womanly 
adventure in claiming their own against the omi- 
nous future. And away yonder, the autocrat of 
all Russia falls from his erstwhile adamantine 
throne as the shriveled apple drops from a wind- 
shaken bough; and still further off, thousands of 
exiles, shaggy and emaciated and hopeless until 
now, are journeying out of Siberia — homeward 
bound ! Meanwhile, yesterday six children — 
five boys and a curly-headed girl — were seen 
marching on the sidewalk of mansioned Beacon 
Street, a fine Uttle lad commanding and a toy 
drum firmly tapping. So vast is the range of 
war's wonder works. 

13 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

Between such extremes what mysteries of 
change are taking place, in our land now as in 
many another heretofore; for the government 
has called for 500,C00 volunteers. In homes of 
the poor and the lowly, oncoming ravages are al- 
ready being confronted by manoeuvres of the 
spirit — perils of livelihood faced, perils of the 
simples of human contentment. In all homes, 
rich or poor, mothers are victoriously marshal- 
ling their souls to realize that their fondly cher- 
ished boys are and must be men from this day 
forward — their boys are enlisting. And, presto, 
men all but fossilized in self-enriching ways of 
life are suddenly pondering generous acts — to 
forego opportunities for shrewdly enlarged 
profits, to give over a favorite yacht or country 
house for the nation's use, to provide time and 
place for employes to drill, to hoist the flag on 
rigidly managed store or factory and let love of 
country flame in the breast of elevator boy 
or salesman or machinist unabashed. 

Women sumptuously housed and habituated 
to delicate pleasures of body and mind are trans- 
formed into earnest plan-makers and hand- 
workers — achieving exactitude in making band- 
ages as prescribed by hospital experts, skilled in 
producing articles of comfort for fighting men 
in camp and field, their instinctive powers of 
womanUness strangely resurrected as if by a 
human Easter day. Boys and girls at school are 
listing vacant lots which may become the scene 
14 



WAR'S WONDER WORKS 

of their summer toil, potatoes and beans loom- 
ing in their minds with a charm Uke that of the 
golden apples of Hesperides. And the day's 
news tells of Elihu Root and Theodore Roose- 
velt — "burying the hatchet," manfully calling 
on all to join in supporting the Democratic 
President in words that sound as if the millen- 
nium had come. 

These things are but samples of war's manifold 
wonder works. Amid the more obvious aspects, 
sometimes inspiring but often abhorrent, such 
magic effects lend deeper meaning. What is it? 
From Italy, D'Annunzio, the soldier-poet, sends 
a message to America that gives answer. Its last 
words are these: "April 15 is the anniversary of 
Lincoln's death. From his sepulchre there issue 
again the noble words that fell from his lips at 
Gettysburg: ' I say to you that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.' " 



16 



PAYING FOR OUR SOUL'S DESIRE 

At the opening of the Civil War Charles EUot 
Norton was as sharp a critic of Lincoln as any 
one has been of Roosevelt in recent affairs. 
When that war was scarcely half over the scholar- 
patriot wrote: " I conceive Lincoln's character 
to be on the whole the great net gain of the war." 
Roosevelt is saying and doing much these days 
which is producing a like change in the thought 
of many who have been his critics. As April 
goes by the real Roosevelt is showing out in the 
high light of another great national struggle. 

Man of action that he is, a veritable dynamo 
of energy and motive power, yet he is the man 
who when crises come is surest to forge the cold 
truth we need into words fired by much ponder- 
ing and moulded with masterly skill. Once again 
it is Roosevelt who has put the truth for the 
present hour into words that ring like a bell: 
" For the sake of our own soil, for the sake of 
memories of the great Americans of the past, we 
must show that we do not intend to make this 
merely a dollar war. Let us pay with our bodies 
for our soul's desire." 

Bishop Lawrence has stated the present sit- 
uation with precision: " We're at war. You 
wouldn't think it from the way people you meet 
16 



PAYING FOR OUR SOUL'S DESIRE 

on the streets act and talk. But we are at war. 
That's going to cost lives and money and possibly 
chagrin, because we may discover that we are 
not ready." Our returned ambassador, fresh 
from Berlin, is now unsealing his lips and de- 
claring: " The Germans were to bring on this 
submarine war, force England to surrender and 
then come here to get the expenses of the war 
from America. Those are the matters that have 
been openly discussed in the Prussian ParHament, 
in the Reichstag and in the best-known news- 
papers of Germany. If we had not gone into 
this war, I am absolutely convinced that Ger- 
many, after the war had been won by her, or 
after the war had ended in a draw, would have 
come over to attack us." General Leonard Wood 
is speaking to us with the solemnity of expert 
certitude, as Kitchener spoke at the beginning 
to lethargic England — " Get ready. Begin 
seriously. You women have got to check up the 
slackers. Get ready to send men across the sea. 
Back up the President." And it is Roosevelt 
who forges into a single sentence the imminent 
need, the impelling motives, the requisite spirit 
of self-devotement, the sublime cause to be 
served — " Let us pay with our bodies for our 
soul's desire." 

Our soul's desire? Have we been so long se- 
cure in liberty and peace that we have no soul's 
desire — so lulled by immunity that we are 
dulled until our soul's desire has expired? Is the 
17 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

spirit of our great past atrophied in the men and 
women and youth of today? It may be that our 
human spirits have become habituated to ease 
through long freedom from war's perils. It may 
seem to many unbelievable that war, so pro- 
foundly hated and so long repudiated as an 
anachronism by us, has actually raised its huge 
bulk in our waters — cast its bl^ck shadow on 
our shores. But once the fact is realized, our 
soul's desire will burn anew, and like a beacon 
rally our millions to the heroism known of old. 
Now that the issue in this monstrous eruption 
of war has become clear; now that we see " the 
standards of the people plunging through 
the thunder-storm," our course can no longer 
be doubted. The foremost people's nation of the 
earth, seeing that the welfare of all is bound up 
with the outcome of Europe's struggle, will not 
fail to show itself a freedom-guarding nation. 
Our young men and those who love them will, if 
it must be, " pay with our bodies for our soul's 
desire." 



18 



VI 

POOR RICHARD'S VINDICATION 

The anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's death 
went by only a few clays since. Immediately 
thereafter in this momentous April we are wit- 
nessing the arrival on our shores of the high 
commissioners of England and France. In view 
of the circumstances that bring them here and 
the purpose of their coming, there is great force 
in a remark dropped by a Boston woman. 
" This," said she, " is Poor Richard's coronation 
day." 

It was Franklin whose homely wisdom drove 
home to the minds of distraught Americans in 
colonial times the value of thrift. His " Poor 
Richard's Almanac," unfaihng in its eagerly 
awaited appearance for a quarter of a century, 
taught the people of the colonies, among many 
other practical bits of wisdom, to put money in 
their purse. " As Poor Richard says " became 
a household form of speech throughout the land. 
And he steadily urged the blessings gained by 
economy and enterprise and consequent full- 
handedness in money matters. " It is hard for 
an empty bag to stand upright," said Poor 
Richard. " Sensible people will give a bucket or 
two of water to a dry pump, that they may after- 
ward get from it all they have occasion for." So 
19 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

the sound mind of Franklin buoyed up the 
heavy-laden souls of America in those early 
times. 

To add to the charm of his words, he it was 
who, before the war for independence, took 
charge of the postal service and made it a source 
of revenue instead of debt. When the war came 
on, he it was who went to France, induced the 
authorities there to guarantee a loan of two 
million francs a year in quarterly payments, got 
them to permit arms and ammunition to be sent 
from France to America and the fitting out of 
privateers there. When the young nation was 
established, and many were bewailing blighted 
business and the high cost of living and the gen- 
eral hard times, he issued his " Consolation to 
America." Every man that put a seed into the 
ground, he declared, was recompensed forty- 
fold; every man that drew a fish out of the 
waters drew up a piece of silver. With so many 
industrious people in the land, said he with grim 
geniality, on cool examination the prospect 
would appear less gloomy than was imagined. 
What wonder that Poor Richard had the ear 
and heart of Americans in those days as no other 
man did in the matter of making them realize 
that " money makes the mare go "! 

True, some charged him with teaching a 
" candle-end-saving philosophy " — with stoop- 
ing to the low-browed shrewdness of " laying up 
treasure on earth." But his high ideals, his 
20 



POOR RICHARD'S VINDICATION 

noble self-surrender to public service, his insis- 
tence on daily appeals to Heaven for guidance in 
the nation's business, rendered such charges in- 
nocuous. And the people heeded his voice as he 
went on insisting that " Heaven helps those who 
help themselves, as Poor Richard says." 

And now? Now America, great in her history, 
mighty in her ideals, superb in her resources, has 
just welcomed to her shores Viviani and Joffre 
from France, Balfour from England. They come 
out of the maelstrom of Europe's war. They 
come with grateful and reverent honor — to ac- 
cept America's regal loans, to help throw Ameri- 
ca's huge resources into the titanic scales of war 
wherein the destinies of civihzation are being 
weighed. The determinative wealth of the 
world is in America now. The thrift and enter- 
prise, the achieving skill and toil of America's 
laborers and business men are to master the 
world's fate. The bag stands upright now, be- 
cause it is not empty, but full. Poor Richard is 
smihng, no doubt, up in the heavenlies. For his 
vindication has come. This is his coronation 
day. 



21 



VII 
ARMS AND A MAN 

When Virgil struck that ringing chord, " Arms 
and a man I sing," he sounded the octave notes 
of an age-long song. Arms, and with them a 
man — that is the gamut of one of humanity's 
endless joys. It has been so from the song which 
Deborah sang when she herself rallied Israel's 
men and sent forth Barak at their head to drive 
back Sisera's hosts, to this May day's jubilation 
when Boston hails the man who withstood Ger- 
many's onrush and saved Paris. Arms and a 
man we sing. 

Only one other strain in the music of man- 
kind has been so vibrant and so undying. It is 
that of love — at base, love and woman. Of 
these two the human spirit has sung evermore. 
In Virgil's tongue the very words are strikingly 
alike — arma for arms, amor for love. And, 
moreover, revolt as we may and doubtless should 
from the terrors of war, from the havoc it brings 
in love's bright realm, nevertheless it is true that 
arms and love have ever been strangely com- 
mingled. Men wield arms for love's sake; love 
crowns the heroes of arms. Was it hate or love 
that wrested the victory of the Marne from 
the drive against beautiful Paris? And how 
Marshal Joffre is enshrined by love — fondly 
22 



ARMS AND A MAN 

called Papa now, forever set in the glowing heart 
of France as her savior! 

Shall we acclaim this latest embodiment of the 
world's ancient ideal of heroic manhood, and add 
our love's radiance to the glory his own country 
has poured about this silent veteran's immortal- 
ized person, and yet forget what his presence 
among us really means? Arms and a man, of 
that supreme combination must our hearts sing 
today. Marshal Joffre and the statesman 
Viviani are here as men who, each in his place, 
have given proof of what manhood in arms can 
do and will do for love's sake. They are here 
because they are now looking to us to do the 
same — looking to the men of America to join 
the men overseas in showing what love of right, 
love of liberty, love of country and homes and 
dear ones can do and will do. They are here to 
receive the majestic token we Americans can 
give that we also know the ringing music of 
" Arms and a man." It is ours to sound that 
music clear and full, as each man and each 
woman may, by the sacrifices and the service we 
render for love's sake. This should be for us a 
day of consecration. So shall Marshal Joffre, 
panoplied in his battle glory, find us a people 
who share his spirit's fire and are worthy to join 
in his praise. 



23 



VIII 
A SEER ON A STREET CAR 

" Will this car land me in Newton, sir? " 
He was a grizzled stranger who had just sur- 
vived the crush about the door of a subway 
car at Park Street and was doubly happy in 
finding a seat. His voice had the sign royal 
of a gentleman. There was that unmistakable 
something about him which marks the traveled 
man. The May sunshine awoke memories of the 
Mediterranean. We were soon conversing. Paris, 
Constantinople, Port Said, Colombo — all seemed 
near in the light of his pensive eyes. The 
swaying of the strap-hangers added to the sense 
of being on shipboard which his talk imparted. 

" Terrible as it is," he was saying presently, 
" this war is a sort of world house-cleaning. 
While writing a friend the other day I found 
myself listing the things it has done or is 
sure to do for the world's bettering. The list 
grew surprisingly long. Strange, isn't it? " 

As the crowded car rolled on the stranger 
talked of his tabulation: " England needed a 
leveling of class barriers to clear the way for 
her long process toward democracy to become 
effective. She's getting it now. France needed 
spiritualizing, a deepening of her life to the 
soul's realities, to make her democracy safe 
24 



A SEER ON A STREET CAR 

and sound. She's got just that. Russia's 
deep-souled people were bound in the irons of 
despotism. Her bonds are broken as if they 
were but withes of straw. The Turkish em- 
pire, long like a stenchful carcass on the high- 
way between the East and the West, is 
actually about to be pushed aside and may 
be buried from sight. Palestine, whose plight 
under Moslem rule has been a mortification to 
Christendom since the Crusades, and a grief 
to Judaism, is now as good as won back to 
the keeping of those who will love and cherish 
its sanctities." 

A stalwart young American in khaki just 
then pushed his way to the strap above us. 
The stranger ran his eyes up and down the 
hthe form. 

" America," he went on, " has lived so long 
in plentj'^ and security that her ideals were 
dying out. She was gaining the world of the 
body and losing her own soul. Democracy, 
human liberty, was languishing in the land of 
its greatest triumphs. The caste spirit of the 
East was taking root here, the social code of 
Europe was spreading. Now America is find- 
ing her soul again. Her youth is resurgent. 
That young fellow's eyes have caught the 
gleam of something finer than dollars or plea- 
sures or privileged pride. As Lincoln said, 
' This nation will under God have a new birth 
of freedom.' " 

25 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

The stranger smiled and tossed his gray head 
as if diverting himself from possibly too much 
speaking. But a few words of appreciation suf- 
ficed to reassure and lead him on, 

" Your prosperity, really imperilled from 
within by growing prodigality, will be advanced 
immensely in the time to come because this war 
will force your people to learn the forgotten arts 
of conservation, of common-sense economy. 
Your health and mental keenness will be greatly 
advantaged by the abandonment of costly cater- 
ing to the palate and the simplifying of diet 
which will come for a time in the stress of war. 
Your temperance problems, which have gained 
so much by becoming questions of business effi- 
ciency, will now gain far more by becoming a 
matter of saving the vast quantities of grain 
used for making drink that all may provide food 
for your people and their allies overseas. Your 
labor men, who by unionism have won so much 
for their own welfare, will now see the importance 
of thinking and acting for the good of all — a 
thing which had become of the most imperative 
urgency. For what are all their labor victories 
worth if the industries of the land and the wel- 
fare of the purchasing public are ruined by enemy 
aggression? Your moneyed men of business 
will now awake to their utter dependence on the 
nation's security and welfare. There will be no 
more of ' the public be damned ' spirit — not for 
a while at least. Your polyglot citizenship will 
26 



A SEER ON A STREET CAR 

be welded in war's fire into a solid Americanism 
— a thing which the huge immigration of the 
past has made a matter of life or death to your 
country. And America will be shaken out of her 
self-centered life, awakened to a realization of 
the part she must take in meeting the needs 
of the world to save her own life. * No man 
lives to himself, and no man dies to himself,' is 
going to come true in America's thinking now." 
We reluctantly reached the button to stop the 
car at the next street. " Do you go ashore 
here? " said the stranger. 



27 



IX 
A LIVING GOD 

In this bright week of May churches have 
celebrated what is known as Ascension Day. The 
week just ending is therefore the crown of the 
" Christian Year." The round of commemora- 
tive celebrations which begins with Advent, 
bursts into the gladness of Christmastide, deep- 
ens to the solemnities of Good Friday, and pours 
the mellow light of Easter on all believers — 
this would be as a firmament of cold stars, beau- 
tiful and impressive, yet distant and cold like 
night skies, if there were no rising sun, no 
ascending Lord, no living God. 

" In the trenches," a Cambridge man recently 
wrote home from a battlefield in France, " in 
the trenches there are three imperatives — food, 
work, God." Men simply cannot live there 
without God! As our experience of life, trying 
enough for most of us in ordinary times, now 
deepens to compass the things we must face as 
we go forward into the trials of a people at war, 
we too shall find ourselves driven to conscious 
need of God — of the living God. Amid the 
babel of these days, therefore, amid the tumult 
of threshing out methods for providing ways and 
means, amid the discussion of tax bills, the 
issuing of bonds to let the future share our bur- 
28 



A LIVING GOD 

den, the proclaiming of selective draft measures ; 
amid the mingled heartaches and thrills of pride 
as parents and young wives and younger sweet- 
hearts take leave of husky youths going away in 
khaki; amid the disordering of all ordinary 
sources of supply for daily needs and the soaring 
costs of living and the unfamiliar rushing to get 
as much ground broken up and planted as pos- 
sible — amid all these things, it will be well for 
us to take to heart that for which this week of the 
Christian year stands. Others have found it 
imperative. We shall, also, sooner or later. 

The war of a half century ago was ended at 
last. The relieved heart of the nation was sud- 
denly plunged once more into anguish. Men and 
women heard with blanched faces that President 
Lincoln had been shot to death. A frenzied 
crowd, surging in a New York street, saw a man 
appear in a balcony. It was General James A. 
Garfield — he who was himself to be the next 
martyred President. He lifted his arm to still 
the multitude. Then his wonderful voice sent 
these words over the listening people: " Clouds 
and darkness are round about Him. Righteous- 
ness and judgment are the habitation of His 
throne. Fellow-citizens, God reigns; and the 
government at Washington still hves! " The 
hush that fell at those words was magical, heal- 
ing, strength-giving. 

Charles Kingsley left a fragment among his 
papers which is all the more impressive because 
29 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

uncompleted. None of us can quite complete 
expression of our thoughts on the subject of 
which he tried to sing. But we can try to sing 
of it — can try to realize its strangely healing 
consolations and strong upholdings. Here is the 
substance of Kingsley's fragment of song: 

" They drift away. Ah, God! they drift forever. 
I watch the stream sweep onward to the sea, 
Like some lone buoy upon a roaring river 

Round which the tide- waifs hang — then drift 
to sea. 

" Yet overhead the boundless arch of heaven 
Still fades to night, still blazes into day. 

Ah, God! my God! Thou wilt not drift 
away I " 



30 



X 

THE VICTORY OF THE CHEERFUL 

" Tell her our first victory must be cheerful- 
ness — and we'll dig ourselves in to hold it." 
The train was moving off. He was young enough 
to have a figure that was captivating in khaki, 
old enough to have a face that did not hide ten- 
derness for some woman left behind. His mes- 
sage was one that may well be heralded to all 
homes from which men and youths are going to 
war as May closes. " Our first victory must be 
cheerfulness — and we'll dig ourselves in to hold 
it." 

Everybody ought to see by this time that the 
war we are entering is so great that it is to be 
won only by stages, not by single decisive dashes 
of any sort. This was revealed when the victory 
of the Marne turned back the German hosts that 
had broken through the defence lines in Belgium 
and were on their way to Paris. It has been 
demonstrated by the stupendous grapple from 
trench to trench ever since then. Everything 
that has loomed clear before the watching world 
out of the whole vast welter of war has added to 
the adamantine certainty that the final victors 
must be content with winning one step and then 
another — one step at a time, held with a spirit 
undespairing and of unquenchable cheer. 
31 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

We ought to begin at once to learn and apply 
this lesson from the struggle overseas. And the 
first victory we can win, the first trench we can 
gain and hold, is to make our way to cheerfulness, 
good courage, a robust and buoyant state of 
mind. While the huge process of making ready 
for the big drive goes on, while billions of money 
and hosts of men and mountains of munitions 
and measureless food supplies and unnumbered 
ships are being made ready, " our first victory 
must be cheerfulness — and we must dig our- 
selves in to hold it." Yielding to anxiety, fore- 
boding ill, giving way to heartache as loved men 
and boys go from us, is weakening and disabling 
to us as a people. It makes things all the harder 
for those who must go. It strips us who stay 
behind of that immense power which inspiring 
love can put forth for the upholding of men who 
must face present hardships and impending 
perils. And it does so prematurely, before there 
is any real occasion for such disaster to our re- 
sources of heart. For it is obviously altogether 
likely that months will pass before any large 
number of Americans besides regulars will leave 
home shores. And who knows what may come 
to pass in that time to alter the part of our citi- 
zen soldiers in the war! 

It is high time, indeed, that a legion of the 
cheerful should form and move in solid ranks to 
win our first victory as a nation. Every sound- 
hearted man should enlist therein at once. No 
32 



THE VICTORY OF THE CHEERFUL 

matter, in this case, if he be past the draft age. 
No matter if he has some bodily defect. If only 
his spirit is brave and able to keep a cheerful 
courage, let him join the ranks. All true women 
should enlist, too. Every one of them who does 
so will resolutely stop letting dark forebodings 
depress her, will cease gloomy talk in her home, 
or when she meets a friend, or as she works in 
her club or church or sewing-circle group pre- 
paring Red Cross supplies and the like. And in 
her letters to son or husband, brother or lover, 
she will remember to do her bit as a recruit in 
the legion of the cheerful. There will be many a 
reHeved smile in soldier camps, many a strength- 
ened heart-beat under khaki, when such letters 
begin to reach the men preparing for war! Both 
men and women can begin at once to win this 
victory by talking and acting with good cheer 
and courage, in home and business and national 
affairs. 

Heaven only knows what victories our men in 
arms may have to win by and by. But we all 
know this, that they will win them, if they must, 
all the more surely when the time comes, if we at 
home now win this first victory and dig ourselves 
in to hold it against all assaults of anxiety, lone- 
liness, longing and fear. This war must be won 
by stages. Remember the message of the man 
in khaki, and enlist now in the legion of the 
cheerful. 



33 



XI 

THE SPIRIT OF " STRIKE-THE-REE " 

In the land of the Dakotas there was once an 
old Indian chief whose name was Strike-the-Ree. 
The city of Yankton and Yankton College pre- 
serve the name of his tribe. His own name is 
still revered thereabout. For old Strike-the- 
Ree steadfastly held the Yanktons loyal to the 
" great father," the United States government; 
and he did so because he never forgot that when 
he was a papoose he was wrapped in the stars 
and stripes. When a certain tribe, the Rees, be- 
came turbulent, put on their war-paint and at- 
tacked the friends and people of the " great 
father," he smote them man-fashion. Hence the 
name — Struck-by-the-Ree some records have 
it, while others feature the man himself by call- 
ing him Strike-the-Ree. The point of interest is 
that he gave the strength of his manhood to be- 
friending the government whose jQag enfolded 
him in childhood. 

On a journey through the Middle West, amid 
the eager life of early June we found the people 
there reproducing the spirit of Strike-the-Ree. 
They are doing so in a manner which ought to 
arouse New England's historic patriotism. They 
seemed to have little or no sense of any impend- 
ing danger to themselves or their immediate 
34 



THE SPIRIT OF " STRIKE-THE-REE " 

interests. Living far inland, amid vast expanses 
of productive soil and all sorts of natural re- 
sources, they do not share with us who dwell on 
the Atlantic coast any thought of what German 
guns might and would do to homes and bank 
vaults and business or public structures, should 
those guns somehow get by the British fleet at 
last. Yet our Western fellow-countrymen are 
rallying to the nation's call with a loyalty noth- 
ing short of stupendous. Everywhere cities and 
towns were seen to be awake as they are not in 
New England, each striving to reach its Liberty 
Bond quota or to fill up its enrolment possibil- 
ities, and to go beyond the same as far and as 
soon as possible. 

Why are they doing all this — these Middle 
West people who feel quite secure themselves? 
It was clear that they are moved by loyalty to 
the nation that has shielded them and theirs. In 
other words, they are reproducing the spirit 
of Strike-the-Ree. American to the backbone, 
they are of the sort that put the " can " on the 
end of that name by putting " I " in the middle 
of it. Each man, woman and child seemed to 
have caught that spirit. 

Shall not we of New England be true to our 
inspiring traditions? The whole country has 
greatened its soul on them — on the story of 
Pilgrims, patriots, heroes of the common weal. 
But the zeal of the Middle West, in spite of its 
inland security, may well awaken New Eng- 
35 



WAR-TIME ''OVER HERE" 

land here on the exposed seaboard. Both East 
and West now have huge need for quick and 
unflinching action in the spirit of Strike-the- 
Ree. 



36 



XII 

NERO'S FOLLY BROUGHT DOWN TO 
DATE 

They were two plain men in the smoker of a 
local train beyond the Mississippi River. A 
stranger chanced to be seated in front of them. 
It was early June. 

" What d'you think Fd better do about these 
Liberty Bonds everybody is so stirred up over? " 
said the younger of the two. " I don't see any 
good reason," answered the older man, " why 
you or me should put good money into them 
things that give us only 3^^ per cent., when we 
can get s' much more out of a lot of other 
things." 

A moment was allowed to pass. Then the fol- 
lowing conversation took place : 

" Gentlemen, what kind of trees are those off 
there — those tall ones in clumps? " 

" Cottonwood and box-elder." 

" Fine looking, aren't they? Why is it that 
they are clustered like great bouquets all over 
this fine open country, where trees are so 
scarce? " 

" They're homesteader plantings — folks set 
'em out round their houses and barns in the early 
days." 

" How long have they been growing? " 
37 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE** 

" Oh, thirty or forty years," said the older 
man. 

" There has been a lot of trouble in these parts 
in that time, hasn't there — Indian raids, for 
instance? " 

" Sure; but Uncle Sam looked out for things 
purty sharp around here." 

" Ah, I see. Gentlemen, I heard you say just 
now that you saw no good reason why you 
should put money into these Liberty Bonds at 
3H per cent., when you can get much more out of 
other things. Did you ever stop to think that 
all these other fine things that have grown up in 
this country, just like those trees out there on 
the prairie, would never have got established here 
but for Uncle Sam's protection, and that they 
may be utterly ruined now, blown into smither- 
eens, if we don't all stand by the government in 
this big war? " 

The older man looked out of the window and 
whistled indifferently. The stranger thought of 
how Nero fiddled while Rome burned — while its 
time-grown glories went up in flame and smoke! 

Presently the younger man leaned over the 
seat's back and said: " Stranger, I get you. I 
guess you're right. It's up to us now. And I'm 
going to buy one of these Liberty Bonds myself, 
anyway." 

But the old blockhead by the window whistled 
on. 



38 



XIII 
THE WAR AND THE COMING MILLIONS 

Once when Henry Clay was traveling by car- 
riage, as men did in his day, on a mountain road 
affording an extensive outlook over the then 
primitive Ohio valley, he ahghted and stood as if 
listening intently. Asked what he heard, he 
replied: " I seem to hear the tread of the coming 
millions." 

This incident was recently recalled by a 
teacher cherished by many. The June " drive " 
for the first Liberty Loan was at its final stage, 
and everybody was anxious about the outcome. 
" We greatly need just now," said she, " to be 
mindful of the Americans of the future — to 
* hear the tread of the coming milUons.' We 
need to do this for our own sake as well as for 
theirs." 

" Why for our own sake? — Do you mean that 
we need the inspiration of feeling that we are 
charged with safeguarding the American heri- 
tage, now in peril, for the coming millions? " 

"Oh! yes, that — of course! But we simply 
must let them help us — must let them bear 
their part in this awful war." 

" But how, pray, can that be done? " we 
asked, with a pardonable air of wonderment at 
such a proposal. 

39 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

" That is the very point which so many will 
fail to see, I'm afraid," our friend repHed. Her 
teacherly heart soon lighted her frown with 
a smile. Then she talked in substance as 
follows : 

One of the most fate-deciding matters, as we 
go into this war, is the course we take in pro- 
viding the vast sums of money we must now raise 
for ourselves and our allies. This is a matter in 
which we can let coming Americans help us, if 
we only see that we can and then do it. Long 
after the guns have hushed on land and sea, long 
after the as yet almost inconceivable scene of the 
signing of peace documents has been enacted, 
this matter of paying such staggering sums of 
money will be a very present actuality. When 
the young men of our day have finished under- 
going the hardships of leaving home and school 
and business, when this generation has com- 
pleted its sacrifice of body-wholeness and life 
itself, when the war sorrows of Americans now 
Uving have become calm and hallowed memo- 
ries, our war debt will not be a thing of the past. 
It alone, of all our present war burdens, will re- 
main tangible, unabated, unmellowed by time. 
It will still loom as real as granite mountains. 
It, therefore, is the only thing which the coming 
milhons can possibly help us handle. 

It is thoroughly right that they should help 
us; for they will benefit immeasurably by what 
we now do — that is, if we do it victoriously. 
40 



THE WAR AND THE COMING MILLIONS 

And it is immensely important, both for their 
sakes and for our own, that we should see how 
they can help us and deliberately let them do it. 
Too heavy immediate taxation on ourselves will 
prove disabling to us who must fight this war 
through — who alone can do so. This, of course, 
would be calamitous, both for us and for those 
who shall come after us. All is at stake now — 
we ourselves must decide the awful issue! What 
folly to weight and weaken our battle powers by 
attempting to carry too much of the financial 
load which the coming millions could share with 
us, and will if we only let them! 

Now, that is precisely what this Liberty Loan 
means, and what other bond issues that ought 
to follow should be understood to mean. These 
bond issues simply capitahze the nation's future 
resources to help us in winning our fight for all 
we cherish against present perils. A nation's 
credit is as practical and actual an asset as a 
man's in business — as practical and as actual 
an asset as bullion or coal or crops or man-power. 
These bonds utilize that asset, just as a business 
man does to survive an emergency. They pass 
on to the future the burdens which would break 
our powers and resources now — pass them on 
to a time in the nation's life when they can be 
borne without ruin — pass them on to times 
which will be prosperous because of our vaUant 
safeguarding of the common welfare now — pass 
on the only portion of our present burdens which 
41 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

future Americans can help us bear. In this 
Liberty Loan we really " hear the tread of the 
coming miUions." 

" And it is simply a matter," said we, " of 
whether we loan the government the money it 
must have and receive interest on it, or let the 
government put its hand in our pockets by taxa- 
tion and take it without interest or repayment." 

" Yes," said the veteran teacher, with a look 
of satisfaction. 



42 



XIV 

TO THE LEGION OF THE CHEERFUL 

An unusual v/elcome has been given to the 
message of the man in khaki which we passed on 
some weeks ago, " Tell her," said he, as the 
soldier-train started, " that our first victory 
must be cheerfulness — and we'll dig ourselves 
in to hold it." He little dreamed, this man so 
stanchly tender, that his words would reach such 
numbers of people besides that one woman up- 
permost in his thoughts. Yet, should he ever 
chance to hear of what has come to pass, we 
trust him to smile good-naturedly and forgive 
our invasion of his rightful privacy. There are 
so many these June days who need such a mes- 
sage as his! 

From near and far have come the responses to 
our proposal that a legion of the cheerful be 
formed at once to withstand the assaults of anx- 
ieties, hardships and losses, to do away with 
gloomy talk and depressed action. Indeed, our 
man in khaki seems to rival the wonderful Roose- 
velt in power to draw a valiant host after him. 
Better still, his legion is sure of a prompt wel- 
come into the nation's fighting array. We there- 
fore proceed forthwith to salute the Legion of 
the Cheerful and to issue, as it were, the order 
of the day. 

43 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

The victory of cheerfulness, it is hereby bul- 
letined, is never to be sought by indifference to 
actual conditions or neglect of the duties they 
impose. On the contrary, it is to be won by 
buoyancy of spirit in full view of conditions as 
they are, by firm refusal to let ill forebodings 
make them worse than they really are, and by 
courageous self-giving to help meet and master 
them. These three regulations should be thor- 
oughly fixed in mind and strictly maintained in 
action by all recruits in the Legion of the 
Cheerful. 

When Thomas Carlyle heard of Margaret 
Fuller's declaration that she had made up her 
mind to take the universe as she found it, the 
old sage chortled: " Gad, she'd better! " The 
sooner we do the same in this dazing war busi- 
ness, so like the universe in its dire inevitabilities 
and mysteries of suffering through man's strange 
blend of evil and good, the sooner and the more 
surely will the end of it all be ours to welcome. 
The spirit of a people has often been the deciding 
factor in the ordeal of war. " Optimism," as a 
writer in the British Weekly recently said, " op- 
timism is the invariable specific for success in 
war." Depression, gloom, dark brooding — 
these are the worn stones in the descent to the 
inferno of incompetence, helplessness, delayed 
victory or even ultimate defeat. This, we 
know, is true evermore in our individual life 
struggles. It is just as true of nations. 
44 



TO THE LEGION OF THE CHEERFUL 

And the heart of a nation, whence flows the 
vitaUty that nerves and empowers the whole 
body, is its homes. If they be depressed, weak- 
ened of cheer and buoyant courage, the nation 
will be like a man whose heart is functioning 
amiss — tremulous, unable to achieve. The 
deepest reason for cheerfulness is that it is the 
surest way to end troubles which we must face 
until we ourselves end them. While young men 
are training, while munition plants are turning 
out war's terrible tools, while shipyards are 
clangorously fashioning a host of sea servants, 
while Red Cross funds and supplies are growing 
like summer's yield under the warmth of our love 
and compassion, we who are left in the homes of 
the land must generate in fullest stores the spirit 
of victory, the cheer of the undaunted and over- 
coming heart. For this only can send the thrill 
of power through all the rest. Women are the 
most valuable recruits in making up the legion 
of the cheerful which must do this indispensable 
part in winning victory. But they, alas, suffer 
most from the terrors of war. Home-bound men 
should therefore see to it, by all that manhood's 
strength and tenderness can devise, that noth- 
ing is left undone to help them win this victory. 
So shall victory be ours at the front — and then, 
then onlv, will our troubles end. 



45 



XV 

THE NUGGET IN THE ROAD 

Did you chance to read, amid the pardonably 
tumultuous news pages of these late June days, a 
certain little item from a Montana town, re- 
cently published? It was to the effect that a 
nugget of gold, not very big, but pure and of 
large worth, had been found lying in the common- 
place roadway of the Western community. The 
news item had the human touch of skilled jour- 
nalism in that it instinctively added enough 
to the statement of the fact reported to satisfy 
the query, " How did it get there? " It appears 
that there are mountains round about that town 
— mountains whence vast minings of precious 
ore have been taken in time past, though men 
have deemed them pretty well exhausted of late 
years and have given them but little attention. 
And there had been a heavy rain, a prolonged 
downpour — to be brief, amid the wash from 
these mountains, all agleam as it lay in wet sand, 
had come down that nugget in the road. 

The suggestiveness of this quaint bit of news, 
its symbolic worth, is too fine and vital to go by 
unheralded. There are mountains round about 
common human life, mountains whence a price- 
less yield has been gathered in the past, moun- 
tains which busy moderns have neglected as ex- 
46 



THE NUGGET IN THE ROAD 

hausted for practical purposes — the mountains 
of things spiritual and eternal. A drenching 
and destructive storm of anxiety, trouble and 
suffering has been flooding all life. And amid 
this overwhelming of all common human affairs, 
men everywhere are finding — strangely enough 
amid such ruin — a nugget in the road. 

What is it? Let the letters going from heart 
to heart these days answer — those simple, 
friendship-guarded and therefore open-hearted 
and genuine records of what is now going on in 
the breasts of men and women. 

We recently quoted from the letter of a Cam- 
bridge man now at the front in France, in which 
he wrote to friends here that there are three im- 
peratives in the trenches — food, work, God. 
A number of inquiries have come for " the book 
quoted." Those words are from nothing so for- 
mal as a book; they were written in a letter to 
friends at home. In response to them a young 
man in the hardships of an ill-equipped training 
station has written: " I don't seem to feel that 
third imperative. I would say that the impera- 
tives here are food, work, and a chum. Can you 
tell me what is the matter and how I can get that 
third imperative? For I need it and want it." 
The reply sent him was that he had the basis of 
what his compatriot in the trenches had gained, 
in his sense of the need of a chum — of one who 
would be true to him and to whom he would be 
true for mutual help and comfort and cheer. 
47 



WAR-TIME ''OVER HERE" 

He needed only to lift his idea of a chum's worth 
to its highest terms to find the supreme One who 
would be true to him and to whom he would be 
true. This comes to pass by doing what Lady 
Henry Somerset affirms she once heard, as it 
were, a voice bidding her do: " Act as though 
God were, and thou shalt know God is." 

A brilHant young officer in a far-away training 
camp recently wrote home, out of his soul's strug- 
gle in view of the horrible thing war is to a fine 
nature: " I think I'm more religious since I've 
been here, more really religious, than ever be- 
fore. In the first place, I've been thinking a 
good deal about it. And then, I suppose, I'm 
living a more normal life in a way. No use talk- 
ing, being busy outdoors brings a man closer to 
his Maker. And then, presumptuous as it may 
seem, I feel as though I begin to see a little way 
into the inscrutability of this war and the great 
power of God ' keeping watch above His own.' " 

Do not such words, abounding in the heart 
to heart communications which the mails are 
now bearing over land and sea, make clear what 
this world storm has brought into common life 
— the golden nugget in the road? 



48 



XVI 

PATRIOTS AS OF OLD 

There are many acts of patriotism without 
parade or the glorification of band music, as this 
Fourth of July goes by. What loyalty, for ex- 
ample, is tingUng in womanly hands plying 
knitting needles in odd minutes snatched amid 
household cares or through quiet hours on sum- 
mer verandas! What love of country and its 
manhood glows in zealous groups gathering in all 
sorts of places for making Red Cross supplies! 
Many a pastor smiled with appreciation this 
week, all over Boston and doubtless throughout 
the country, as he heard at his telephone: " This 
is the manager of your exchange. I am acting 
for Mr. Hoover, to remind you of the letter you 
received from him. We hope you will help the 
cause of food conservation by speaking of it to 
your congregation next Sunday." And many a 
man, whose hands have hardly grasped a hoe 
since he was a boy, is now in his garden in morn- 
ing or evening hours, careless of blisters, serving 
the same prosaic but none the less patriotic? 
cause that enlisted the telephone official. 

These are but examples of the many unsig- 

nalized acts of patriotism nowadays. They give 

proof that the spirit of 1776 is glowing still in 

1917. It is timely and for the public good that 

49 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

one of a different kind be referred to now, when 
subscribers for the Liberty Bonds have recently 
made their second payment under the govern- 
ment's plan. 

In the matter of paying for these bonds, many 
in the host of people who subscribed for them 
will be able to meet their obligations because 
they can pay a little at a time — a dollar or two 
a week, or so much a month. What does this 
mean? How is it that this can be done? The 
answer is that the bank stands in the place of 
the subscriber, and the government gets its 
imperatively needed money on schedule time — 
that is, by the end of August the government 
gets the full amount of these bonds. Many will 
simply think: " Well, the bank gets the interest 
on my bond until I get the whole thing paid for. 
That's no particular service to me or the govern- 
ment." Let us see. The government gets the 
money in full as planned. It does not and could 
not wait until you get it paid in. The bank pays 
it for you. It does so with money on which it 
would readily get 5 per cent, interest. It does so 
taking the 33^ per cent, interest the government 
pays. To forfeit l3^ per cent, interest is not a 
thing that business men with large responsibil- 
ities do without a reason. What is that reason? 
Surely this is a public service, patriotic in spirit, 
and the finer because done willingly and with- 
out display. 



50 



XVII 
THE RAMBLER ROSE 

Who can put into words what the rambler 
roses are signalhng these July days? They are in 
full bloom now in New England. Everywhere 
they are crowding trellises and porch rails; their 
jocund forms are massed about windows and 
doorways, and even against house walls where a 
bird could scarcely cling. They are called 
ramblers, though they in no way justify the name 
save by this fondness for adorning every reach- 
able part of the homes they share with humans. 
Indeed, they are essentially of the home-keep- 
ing sort. Yet, to tell the truth outright, they are 
not staid — not confined as it were to the space 
of an old-fashioned hoop-skirt, like many a 
quietly sweet and delightful rose-bush. No, they 
have a bit of fling in their natures, a dash of joy 
in the freedom of " going somewhere." But 
they are home-lovers none the less — all the 
more, in fact, since they touch with their life's 
gladness and beauty much more of the home to 
which they belong than proper rose-bushes ever 
dream of reaching. 

We are inclined to believe that this is at least 

a part of what the rambler roses are silently 

wigwagging to all watching eyes these vacation 

days. If this be true, they who are still at home, 

51 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

still drudging on in their everyday routine, may 
well heed the message of their rambler roses. 
" Go somewhere," get out of the fixed and con- 
fined existence in which you are good and faith- 
ful day after day. You can be a home-lover quite 
as truly if you do so, and you will thereby reach 
many more sides and points of your home with 
your life's refreshing and beautifying power. 
And those who are already out of the routine, 
ramblers for summer days and nights in the coun- 
try or by the sea or amid the mountains, may 
catch the message their rambler roses at home 
are sending and lay it to heart for their reas- 
surance and fuller gladness. Sea and shore, field 
and hill are really parts of our homes. It is good 
for us to reach out and touch them with life's 
joy, to let the vivacious summer move us to 
break away betimes from confined duty-doing 
for the joy of " going somewhere." We shall all 
gain something of the charm of the rambler rose 
thereby — the charm of covering a little more 
of our dwelling-places with cheerful life each 
year that we live. 



§2 



XVIII 
THE DRAFT DAY 

The sun came up over the Atlantic, bright and 
glowing, on the eventful day. It had just left 
war-writhing Europe behind, in night and deeper 
darkness. Yet how its beams flashed as it caught 
the dim, long hne of America's coast on the 
morning of the 20th of July! There was no sign 
of dismay. 

By the hour when the awesome scene of the 
draft began around the great glass bowl in the 
nation's Capitol, the sun was flooding the whole 
land with summer splendor, and at the same 
time it was drawing the myriad life therein into 
the service of a new day — a day which, like all 
days, if one has eyes to see, was a vast blend of 
peace and battle. It was, in fact, holding the 
great globe of the earth in place for its huge 
draft, as it had done on unnumbered days past. 

But while reaching its mystical might into 
space and setting the round earth in its place for 
high service, the sun on the nation's draft day 
picked out, one by one, every root and blade, 
every creeping or winging creature, every beast 
or soul-bearing being — summoning each to 
serve as it could for the welfare of all. 

They were all responding to the sun's call, too, 
when the blindfolded men reached into the great 
53 



WAR-TIME ''OVER HERE" 

glass bowl filled with little black capsules, and 
so began the nation's draft day. Ten million 
names in a bowl, ten million young men await- 
ing the result of that scene at Washington, are 
really not so extraordinary a spectacle after all, 
in this sun-drafted world of ours. 

All the day long, while the draft went on, 
every flowering plant and stalk holding grain or 
berry was drawing moisture or mineral from the 
soil; every creature with a mouth was drafting 
something that could serve to maintain its life; 
every being with a mind was appropriating to 
his or her needs countless existences subject to 
that call. When one stops to think about it, 
there is something very awing in the vast range 
of the human draft on every day we live. 

Hearts were at work, too, on the day of the 
draft. Lovers were drawing each to the other. 
Husbands and wives were relying on one another 
in times of need. Mothers were cuddling little 
ones to preserve their own joy; on this particular 
day some ten millions of them were cherishing 
sons from twenty to thirty years of age 
with added tenderness. Fathers, in their world- 
worn hves, were strangely conscious of paternal 
thoughts, like the power of gravitation, concern- 
ing their sons. And young wives were realizing 
the mystery of wedded life with youths whose 
names were in the nation's draft bowl. 

Over all, the Father of the whole realm of 
being was drawing each and all, drafting for His 
54 



THE DRAFT DAY 

own ends earth's myriads. Compared with His 
might of love and law, even the sun's midsum- 
mer glow^ was feeble, and the nation's call was of 
passing importance, however imperative now. 
It was a wonderful day, indeed, yesterday — 
the day of the draft in America. 



55 



XIX 

AFTER THE DRAFT DAY 

Scene. Outside a municipal court in a suburb 
of Boston. 

Time. The day after the great draft. 

The evening before, long lines of young men 
extended from the court room, down the steps, 
along the walk under the elm trees. Each man 
was awaiting his turn to get his draft number. 
These hnes disappeared some time during the 
night. But many were coming throughout the 
morning that followed, all looking at little cards 
as they left. 

It was noon now. Beside a great elm, some 
distance from the entrance to the court room, a 
young woman was seen. The midsummer sun- 
shine was dazzlingly bright outside the tree's 
shade in which she stood. She was dressed in 
white from head to feet. Her arms were bare to 
their elbows — and they were comely. Her face 
and form were almost girlish, so young was she. 
Yet on the grass near the base of the tree — 
near the white-clad feet of the waiting woman, 
also — a babe was playing. It, too, was clothed 
in white. Its mother seemed oblivious to all 
about her. Now and then her Httle one cooed 
aloud in its play. 

At length a young man came down the stone 
56 



AFTER THE DRAFT DAY 

steps. He was gazing at a small card. His 
steps were brisk, however. They soon brought 
him to the side of the figure in white by the elm 
tree. Before he reached her she had a copy of a 
newspaper open. At once and for long their heads 
were close together, searching the long columns 
of draft numbers in the paper. Was he drafted 
— was the young husband's number drawn in 
the great draft? 

While the two stood thus, absorbed in their 
search, the baby, still playing on the grass, in 
its glee hoisted its wee white hat on the tip of 
the young wife's parasol! 

A police captain, looking on at a respectful 
distance, softly exclaimed: "How's that for a 
war-time picture! " 



57 



XX 

THE DRAFT SEEN IN LARGER LIGHT 

The results of the draft now in process, on the 
common life of us all as well as on the nation's 
destiny, are countless and life-changing beyond 
computation. Thinking people may well seek to 
see such a momentous matter in the fullest light 
and from every viewpoint. 

There is a well-known passage in the Epistle 
to the Romans which strikingly lends itself to 
this purpose. It parallels in religion, point by 
point, the progressive phases of this great na- 
tional procedure. It reads: " Whom God fore- 
knew, he also foreordained to be conformed to 
the image of his Son; and whom he foreordained, 
them he also called; and whom he called, them he 
also justified; and whom he justified, them he also 
glorified." This sentence exactly marks out the 
august steps by which the nation is now ad- 
vancing to meet world issues involving the fate 
of mankind. 

When the human crisis became unescapable, 
the nation foreknew the vast hosts of its young 
men — foreknew them as absorbed in every- 
day life, pleasure lovers and seekers after their 
own welfare in the endless ranges of personal 
interests, yet back of all this having a latent 
patriotism which would overwhelm personal 
58 



THE DRAFT SEEN IN LARGER LIGHT 

matters if awakened by an adequate appeal. 
And these whom it foreknew, the nation fore- 
ordained. This was substantially the meaning 
of the legislation which brought some 10,000,000 
young men to the registration of June 5. And 
these whom it thus foreordained to be con- 
formed to the ideal of national saviors, the 
nation also called. This was what began to be 
done in the solemn drawing around the great 
glass bowl in the Capitol on July 20. This call- 
ing is the phase of the stupendous procedure 
now passing. This is the real significance of 
all that is to take place before the exemption 
boards in days now at hand. 

After this — what? Those whom it calls, the 
nation will justify. Taking young men who are 
unsoldierly enough now, accustomed to comfort 
and pleasure, easy-going in body, self-willed in 
mind, and strangers to unifying obedience to 
authority, unskilled in war's awful arts, it puts 
its uniform upon them, it gathers them into 
training camps, it undertakes to harden their 
bodies, teach their minds, discipline their whole 
beings — in a word, to make them soldiers. This 
is what will go on for weeks and months after the 
calling now in process. Then the nation will 
justify these young men — will send them forth 
as soldiers, bearing its approval, honored with 
its trust. 

Then what? Those whom it thus justifies, the 
nation will glorify. That phase in our progres- 
59 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

sive advance is yet in the future for the most 
part, but not entirely. Signs of it are already 
seen in the minds of our people. It will come in 
its fulness ere long. This nation has never failed 
to glorify the men who have borne the shock of 
battle in its behalf. It will not fail now. What 
an outpouring of honor and love will come by 
and by, when our soldiers and sailors come 
home from hard-won victories and bravely 
borne defeats, or — and this shall come to pass 
— when their names only are sent home to be 
enshrined in glory undying! 



60 



XXI 
HOLLYHOCKS 

In the year-long ritual that hallows our earth, 
we are now midway in the processional of the 
flowers. July is ending. The pure little chil- 
dren of springtime have gone by; the deeper- 
colored and therefore more human forms of 
flowerland, which mark early summer, have 
nearly faded from sight; even the jocund ram- 
bler roses have lost their glow and become dim 
as they go from us. Hollyhocks have now come 
in the sacred pageant. 

What strains are they sounding in the long 
procession? We may well seek to hear them 
distinctly — even to catch the poetry of words 
borne on the swell of music which their coming 
causes. For the hollyhocks will be in our view 
until frost comes. And see! Their guise is bell- 
fashioned, or of trumpet form, if you prefer. 
Clearly they are proclaimers! They have news 
to make known, and a call to sound — these tall 
figures in lines or groups beside many a dwelUng, 
to be seen along nearly all home streets. 

Amid all alarms, and the tramping of myriad 
feet war-bound, and the roar of the daily news, 
and the thumping of hearts, anxious or charged 
with the resolute spirit of victors, the hollyhocks 
are quietly sounding their proclamation for all 
61 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

who will hear it. There is healing in it for weari- 
ness and soreness of soul; very heartening is it 
amid all disturbance of peace-time reliances; 
and, withal, it calls to dutiful fidelity buttressed 
by mindfulness of a good-doing that will not fail 
nor be discouraged, no matter how the world of 
men goes wrong. 

For the hollyhocks are proclaiming the con- 
summation once more of nature's wonder-work. 
They are sounding out the triumph of the Cre- 
ator's ageless goodness and each man's brief 
power to profit thereby. Such harvests, such 
yields of grain and vegetable and fruit, are now 
coming to their fulness that winter and even 
world war will not be able to grip us and our 
neighbors overseas in hunger. That is news 
worthy of bells and trumpets, surely! 

And the hollyhocks are calling us to high- 
hearted living. There is no doubt of this. Can 
there be any other meaning in the many colors 
in which their bells are swung, their trumpets 
raised? They are all bright. Red is for deep 
joy, no doubt — and there are ever so many reds — 
pink must be for patient cheer, purple for royal 
courage, golden for good hope, white for Tight- 
ness of heart and straightforward life. To be 
sure, the hollyhocks can only symbolize all this 
for us, as they now come thronging in this pro- 
cessional of the year's ritual. But, even so, they 
bring to mind the surest verities we know — 
verities which become clouded and very dim 
62 



HOLLYHOCKS 

often in days like these. We may well take time, 
therefore, to have a look at the hollyhocks and 
listen to their bells, or trumpets if you so fancy 
them; for by these things men and women 
live. 



63 



XXII 

THE FIRST HOME-COMING 

The first officers' training camps have ended. 
Mid-August has come. A new host of young 
men will throng the places vacated by the sol- 
dierly fellows now being welcomed home for a 
few days before they go on to the service for 
which they have been prepared. Scenes of 
home-coming are now being enacted over the 
entire country, as these men come gayly back to 
the surroundings of their youth — from Platts- 
burg, from Fort Snelling in Minnesota, from 
Fort McPherson in Georgia, and many another 
training camp. There will be other scenes to 
record by and by — doubtless very different; 
but now it is well to chronicle those of the pres- 
ent, and mark their meaning. Let a scene ob- 
served in Boston yesterday be taken as typical. 

" There he is," cries a lad in his mid-teens, 
who, to pass the time of waiting, has been bound- 
ing a ball at the foot of a homelike street running 
down a hillside to the suburb's main thorough- 
fare. He races after the big street car until it 
comes to the stopping place. Among those who 
alight — yes, there he is! 

He went away, a little while ago, a youth near- 
ing twenty-one, handsome as ever a boy was. 
But see him now as he steps from the car. How 
64 



THE FIRST HOME-COMING 

square his shoulders are in his khaki uniform, 
how full his chest is, how lithe his legs! And 
look at the straight, bronzed neck of the boy! 
How that bell-crowned cap becomes his erect 
head, with the visor close over his eyes! He is 
a lieutenant now, if you will believe it. 

Briskly but modestly he grips the hands of 
those fortunate enough to be near to greet him. 
The neighborhood marketman comes running 
down the street in his big white apron; the 
Italian fruit-store man comes close after him; 
a youth who has just been certified by the local 
exemption board outruns them, and a pretty 
young woman in dainty summer garb leaves the 
sidewalk to join the gathering in the street. All, 
even the Italian, call him lieutenant — this boy 
of the yesteryears — and their faces shine with 
pride. The ball-bounding younger brother has 
manfully swung the heavy suitcase from the sol- 
dier's grip. " Let him go on," cries one of the 
welcomers, " there's some one waiting for him 
up home." Quietly smiHng, the young man 
strides up the side street. Instinctively all but 
the brother refrain from following him. 

Soon, under the trees, a little woman in white 
springs into view at the top of the street's ascent. 
At first her feet skip like a girl's. But soon how 
quiet she is! Has she not stilled her heart for 
him all these weeks? She will not fail to keep 
dignity for his sake now. Wise mothers under- 
stand how man-grown sons hate palaver. But 
65 



WAR-TIME " OVER HERE " 

presently the little figure in M'hite and the stal- 
wart form in khaki come together — the moth- 
er's hand can be seen patting the broad back. 
The rest of her is hidden by khaki! 

" Dat make me cry! " murmured the ItaUan 
as he wiped his glasses in the group at the foot 
of the street. Just then a snowy-haired old man 
came into view up the walk under the trees, and 
stood awaiting the mother and son as they 
slowly climbed the hill arm in arm. 



66 



XXIII 

A SENTENCE THAT WILL LIVE 

There is a single sentence in the President's 
note in reply to the Pope's peace proposals, as 
August ends, which deserves especial reading. 
It should be studied word by word by all who 
are trying to comprehend what is going on in 
this war. It should be underscored in all war- 
time scrapbooks. It should even be committed 
to memory by all who would stay their souls in 
strength for facing hard duties due to the war. 
Singularly free from bluster, it is yet charged 
with thunderous truths and terrific flashes of 
passion. We give it vspecial setting to help fix 
attention upon it. 

The object of this war is to deliver the free 
peoples of the world from the menace and the 
actual power of a vast military establishment 
controlled by an irresponsible government, which, 
having secretly planned to dominate the world, 
proceeded to carry the plan out without regard 
either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the 
long-established practices and long-cherished prin- 
ciples of international action and honor; which 
chose its own time for the war; delivered its blow 
fiercely and suddenly; stopped at no barrier, 
either of law or of mercy; swept a whole continenl 
67 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

within the tide of blood — not the blood of soldiers 
only, but the blood of innocent women and children 
also, and of the helpless poor — and now stands 
balked but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths 
of the world. 

This is probably the most majestic indictment 
yet penned concerning the world war. Try 
underscoring its massed words and phrases to 
discover how freighted with solid facts and fused 
with fire they are — from the opening array of 
" the free peoples of the world " as the victims 
to be dehvered, on through the grim vivisection 
of the victimizer and Germany's procedure as 
such, up to that impahng of her as now standing 
" balked but not defeated, the enemy of four- 
fifths of the world." This sentence, we venture 
to think, will be conned and quoted by genera- 
tions to come; for the days through which we 
are living will draw the enlightened eyes of the 
future to the end of humanity's struggles. 



68 



XXIV 

" CARRY ON " 

In many branches of military service a rather 
quaint form of expression has come into use 
which may well be passed on to civilians in these 
September days when so many young men are 
leaving home to serve the nation. When an 
officer appears, wherever it may be, on land or 
sea, every man stands at attention. Thereupon, 
the officer wishing to release the men from pro- 
longing this token of respect unduly, often sim- 
ply says, " Carry on." Most of the uniformed 
men on Boston streets with whom we recently 
made the test of inquiry recognized the expres- 
sion and explained it rather genially to the same 
effect. " It means," said they, " Go on with 
what you were doing " — writing a letter home, 
perhaps, or to " the girl I left behind me," play- 
ing a friendly game, enjoying a book or maga- 
zine, eating a meal, doing some commonplace bit 
of work. " Carry on " is the " as you were " of 
ordinary life among military men. 

This seems to us precisely the word that should 
be spoken to everybody here at home just now. 
As cherished young men are going to training 
camps and war service, the hearts of many are 
moved to stand at attention, as it were. This is 
fitting. It is natural and for the good of the 
69 



WAR-TIME ''OVER HERE" 

men going forth as the nation's defenders as well 
as for the good of our people generally that mani- 
festations of honor and affection be made in 
homes and communities. But when that has 
been done — what then? 

The men who have donned the nation's vari- 
ous uniforms and gone to their places of hard- 
ship and danger would surely make a common 
answer to that question. They would say to 
their friends at home, " Carry on." They want 
the life at home to go on as it was when they 
were with us. It will cheer and nerve them with 
strength to know that daily duties are being per- 
formed unfalteringly, home comforts main- 
tained in full without depression, pleasures con- 
tinued much the same as before they left us. As 
autumn and winter bring the time when the life 
of home and school, church and community 
usually takes on fuller activity and interest, our 
soldiers and sailors will wish to know that it is 
so now, though they are far away. 

Of course they would not have us forget them. 
Most certainly we must and shall do many 
things all these days to provide for their welfare 
and mightily support their huge undertaking. 
We at home are at war as truly as our men who 
have gone to the fighting. But amidst all our 
war- time activities, we must not fail to maintain 
the endeared life at home which is such an em- 
powering memory and upholding in the hearts 
of our fighting men. Away with down-hearted- 
70 



" CARRY ON " 

ness. Have done with weakened interest and 
activity. Keep the home bright and cheerful, 
the school full of spirit, the church alive with 
hearty workers, social pleasures engaging and 
plentiful; and push business man-fashion, spurn- 
ing the folly of gloom. Let letters to the men 
gone to war bear abundant proof of all this. 

" Carry on " — not in the sense of giving way 
to loneliness and sorrow and anxious depression. 
Put the military meaning into that phrase. 
" Carry on," here at home, even as the men in 
war service have learned to lift those words to 
fuller meaning. For one of them, Robert W. 
Service, has written — 

Carry on! Carry on! 
Fight the good fight and true; 
BeUeve in your mission, greet dawn with a cheer; 
There's big work to do and that's why you are here. 
Carry on! Carry on! 
Let the world be the better for you ; 
And at last, when you die, let this be your cry : 
" Carry on, my soul! Carry on! " 



71 



XXV 
THE MEN BEHIND THE MARCHERS 

" A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings 
home full numbers." — Shakespeare. 

The outworking of the vast process under the 
selective draft grows in impressiveness. A few 
days ago, small percentages out of the ten mil- 
lion registrants started for the training camps of 
" the national army "; now a 40 per cent, quota 
goes to join them, as September's ruddy 
splendors glorify the land. Soon the great 
camps will be thoroughly established in all de- 
tails and filled with young men fit from head to 
foot — the flower of the nation's masculine life. 

This is a good time to speak of the men behind 
the host thus moving forward throughout the 
land — the citizens whose long and exacting 
labors have brought such an achievement to 
orderly consummation. The national govern- 
ment laid a heavy load of work and responsi- 
bility on the men called to serve on the local ex- 
emption boards and the district appeal boards; 
it also committed to them a trying and solemn 
trust. They were called upon, in the heat of 
midsummer, to turn from their private affairs 
and immure themselves for weeks in rooms 
wherein they were to handle voluminous papers 
and long lines of young men. After examina- 
72 



THE MEN BEHIND THE MARCHERS 

tion, man by man, they were to pass judgment 
on each — a judgment involving the breaking 
up of home Hfe, fraught with hardship for all, 
and the issue of life or death for many. The 
homes and hearts of neighbors and friends were 
often drawn upon for the young men chosen. 
Who would wish to sit in judgment in such a 
proceeding? Weeks ago we heard one of these 
men say privately: " I would rather enlist and 
go to the front myself than go through what we 
have to do." 

But from coast to coast these men have given 
themselves to their task. They have let their 
own business and professional affairs and even 
domestic life take second place, have studied 
their instructions and followed them, have 
steeled their hearts against many an appealing 
consideration, have sought for principles of ac- 
tion fair to all, and they have not swerved from 
meeting the obvious necessity of providing a host 
of men fit to be the nation's saviors and the 
world's. And now? Now their long devotion to 
duty is bringing forth its vast yield in the 
masses of young men moving in due order and 
at the appointed hour to the training camps. 

It is an impressive sight, these thronging 
youth going forth at the nation's call to train 
their bodies and minds in the grim arts of war 
because their homeland and the world now need 
their virile help. Theirs, of course, is the most 
moving self-giving. But as they go, thoughtful 
73 



WAR-TIME ''OVER HERE" 

minds will reflect that such a spectacle has not 
come to pass offhand. The silent older citizens 
who have fulfilled their trust by giving them- 
selves to the huge task of choosing this splendid 
array are to be thought of now with gratitude 
and praise. The men behind the marchers are 
the national army's first victors. 



74 



XXVI 
THE BLESSING OF BOOKS 

Among the various great phases of provision 
for war-time needs which are receiving special 
attention, a nation-wide movement is under way 
as September ends to provide a hbrarj'^ of good 
books for every training camp in the country. 
This is far from being of secondary importance 
among the other projects. When one considers 
the American type of manhood, its effectiveness 
is seen to be great. 

Through the weeks and months of camp Hfe 
to come, many a man will be saved from the 
disabling clutch of weariness, illness, loneliness 
or hope deferred, because well-chosen books are 
to be at hand in the autumn and winter hours 
of leisure. Monotony will be charmed away, 
drudgery forgot, irritations soothed, temptations 
dwarfed, anxieties touched with cheer, priva- 
tions transformed to patriotic sacraments of fel- 
lowship. For to many a man of parts books 
will prove messengers from the world of good- 
ness and beauty and full-hearted living — the 
world which at times becomes dim and seemingly 
far away to young men herded in barracks. The 
reading of a vital book is much the same in the 
human realm as food is in the physical or prayer 
in the spiritual. Books make real the life of 
75 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

humanity's joys and sorrows, treasures and 
sanctities; they bring nourishment and fresh 
vigor. Their worth is not simply to aid in 
whiling away ill-conditioned leisure entertain- 
ingly, valuable as that is. They restore aware- 
ness of the things by which men live. They 
re-open fellowship with the wise and witty, 
the good and lovely, the happy and gladden- 
ing, the brave and strong in this glowing 
world. 

Many authoritative voices might be allowed 
to speak here in confirmation of the life-giving 
power of books. But we choose to let a single 
voice, and that a lowly one, speak for them all 
to quicken the public sense of the blessing of 
books to our men in the training camps. It was 
Emily Dickinson, a true daughter of the old- 
time American democracy, who wrote the words 
which seem to us perhaps the choicest we know 
to be sounded just now. Here they are: 

" He ate and drank the precious words, 

His spirit grew robust ; 
He knew no more that he was poor, 

Nor that his frame was dust. 
He danced along the dingy days, 

And this bequest of wings 
Was but a book. — What liberty 

A loosened spirit brings! " 



76 



XXVII 

" THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND 
AND WAIT " 

A certain well-known hotel has hit upon a way 
of meeting a situation characteristic of these 
times which is too good to escape pubUcity. 
Many of its employes have gone to war. Its 
service is impaired, as October brings fuller 
business. The guests are unavoidably incon- 
venienced, the care of their wants being delayed 
or rendered inefficient by " green " workers. 
But there is evidently a man of parts in the 
management. For by every guest room bureau, 
and elsewhere throughout the large establish- 
ment, choicely printed cards have promptly 
appeared, whereon are the words, 

"They also serve who only stand and wait." 

— Milton. 

That is all. But this simple appeal has not 
failed. It reaches the common sense and good 
will of people. It touches the fellow-feeling of 
sojourners, weary and hurried, apt to be im- 
patient and exacting though they often are. It 
seems to say to them, " Won't you help us in 
our emergency? When things go amiss, by just 
waiting a bit you yourself will serve — will lend 
us a hand." Little did the stately poet dream, 
77 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

we fancy, that the hne with which he crowned 
the noble sonnet on his bHndness would ever let 
him serve ordinary men in this commonplace 
fashion! What a light w^ould have shone in 
Milton's sightless eyes if he could have known 
that this would come to pass, centuries after 
his blindness has ended, and in a mighty nation 
overseas now leagued with his beloved England 
in a war for the cause of liberty which he so 
grandly served! 

This is a " word spoken in due season," in- 
deed. Nowadays all of us would do well to fix 
that jewelled hne in mind and make it a watch- 
word. The demands of everyday life are exact- 
ing enough at best to warrant doing so. But 
now, amid the disordering of customary arrange- 
ments everywhere which the war has brought, 
the call for such considerateness is of extraordi- 
nary importance. In every store, in offices, in 
industrial plants, as well as in homes and schools 
and churches, the service is likely to be more or 
less handicapped somehow because of the war. 
Often it will be because somebody has gone from 
his usual work to serve the country — your 
country, the land whose welfare is the safe- 
guard of all that you hold dear. Almost every- 
body in business and the whole social order is 
working under such disadvantages now. 

To recognize this fact, to take yourself in 
hand and gain the grace of patience and the 
poise of cheerful forbearance is a patriotic thing 
78 



'' THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY WAIT " 

to do. It will prevent many a vexation un- 
worthy of one willing to do his bit in war-time. 
It will do much toward easing the burden im- 
posed in this particular way on most of us. It 
will avoid much undeserved and unfair criticism, 
ungenerous words and actions, hurtful treatment 
of some fellow mortal who may be doing his or 
her best. While others have gone to fight for 
your country, imperilling life and limb, you also 
can serve the great common cause by just show- 
ing enough patience to keep good-natured — 
and wait a little when things go wrong or don't 
go as promptly as they might. Indeed, in per- 
sonal as well as great public matters, we Ameri- 
cans must " learn to labor and to wait." 



79 



XXVIII 
TIRE PUNCTURES AHEAD 

A business man just returned from Germany 
says the Kaiser's automobile is about the only 
one over there still running on inflated tires. 
Even the Crown Prince has to bump along on 
tires stuffed with rags or wrapped with rope. 
The war, it seems, has stripped Germany of tires 
and what tires stand for. 

Many here in America are still riding on quite 
at their ease in regard to the war, even in late 
October, as it were on well-inflated tires. They 
won't realize that their tires, though they still 
" hold up," are worn threadbare. They won't 
heed the roughness of the road to which we have 
all now come after a long stretch of fairly smooth 
riding. No; they just "give her more gas," 
push on in their own private concerns, and re- 
fuse to bother about taking care to keep their 
tires in good condition. They are due for punc- 
tures before long which will bring them to their 
senses. Flat tires make exceedingly hard going. 

The first puncture to guard against is in 
thinking " the war is going to end soon, Ger- 
many is cracking, and I needn't bother with 
helping to pile up a huge war fund like this sec- 
ond Liberty Loan." The only thing on earth 
that can make the present crack in Germany's 
80 



TIRE PUNCTURES AHEAD 

strength become a break, and so end the war 
soon, is that America should go in with all her 
might — and do it now. If Germany hears in a 
few days that we have added three billions to 
our fighting funds and then some — that 
" crack " will open a bit. It will close up and 
she will fight on the more doggedly if she hears 
that we Americans have failed to do this. There 
will be a bad puncture for your comfortable 
tires in that! 

A second puncture will likely follow this one 
any time. Failure in this October Liberty Loan 
campaign would not only hearten Germany, 
but it would also dishearten our war-wasted 
allies. This would probably open the way to 
ending the war without shackling Germany. 
What then? Everybody would be apprehensive, 
business of all kinds would take to cover, and for 
an indefinite period you would — let us put all 
in one word — you would have to run with one 
more flat tire. 

Another slashing puncture would be certain to 
follow. With Germany left unconquered, we 
should have to defend our homeland against 
her. The ablest judges of affairs say so. We 
should have to do it on this side of the sea, too, 
and do it alone. "If we don't ' come across ' 
now, the Germans will come across later," That 
sentence puts a whole mine of iron into a tonic 
capsule. To go on saying, " This isn't our 
fight " is sheer self-delusion. It will be our fight, 
81 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

here at home and alone, if we don't make it our 
fight yonder overseas and now. 

A fourth puncture to your easy-going tires is 
hidden in questioning: "Why should such an 
immense additional sum of money be called 
for? " Hundreds of thousands of our young men 
are now entering the rigors of training camps — 
silently moving through perils to the other side 
of the Atlantic — bravely undergoing the grim 
final preparation at the booming battle fronts. 
Soon we shall begin to receive the reports of 
casualties, woundings and sufferings, heroisms — 
deaths. What a ripping gash of a puncture your 
ease and comfortable unconcern will get if you 
then realize that by your neglect of duty now 
you have failed to provide in time everything 
that money can secure for their welfare and up- 
holding — these valiant young Americans and 
their comrades-in-arms, who are standing "be- 
tween our loved homes and the war's desolation," 
yonder in the smoke and thunder! 

Four punctures, four flat tires, and a long, 
rough road ! Why take the risk of such a plight? 
You can provide against it by doing your duty 
now. Buy a bond. Look out for your tires. 



82 



XXIX 

ROOSEVELT'S SINGLE EYE 

Colonel Roosevelt has so often proved rep- 
resentative of things American that any new dis- 
closure concerning him may fairly be taken as 
prophetic. It has recently been made public 
that he now sees with but one e\'e. It is a 
striking fact, when one stops to think of it, that 
such a thing should become known at such a 
time as this concerning such a man. It lends 
itself to use as an omen as November darkens 
on our war-making land. 

The Greeks, it will be remembered, had a con- 
ception of certain giants whom they designated 
by the name Cyclops. Their single eye seemed 
to sj'^mbolize concentration of strength. Jesus, 
with his far different conception of masterful 
being, expressed his thought in much the same 
manner. He made the single eye the condition 
of victory as he conceived it. He meant, of 
course, that whether there were two eyes or one 
the seeing must be as though there were but one. 
There must be no double vision. The eye that 
offended against this high imperative must be 
plucked out. " It is good for thee to enter into 
life with one eye," he declared, rather than to 
go to destruction with two eyes. 

That Colonel Roosevelt now sees with one 
83 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

eye only is, in fact, an outward misfortune which 
may serve him well by betokening his inward 
singleness of vision in these days of war. It will 
do his countrymen great good to reflect how he 
has subordinated political hostilities and per- 
sonal considerations. He has stood by the gov- 
ernment, has pleaded mightily for its belated 
undertakings for war, has sent his sons to the 
fighting though he was balked in his herculean 
zeal to go himself as the crowning of his career. 
He has seen nothing with double vision. It 
might well come to pass that his highest dis- 
tinction should be the appellation, " The man 
with the single eye." This would go well with 
" Old Hickory " and " Stonewall " and " The 
Rail-Splitter." 

The time has come for proclaiming the gospel 
of the single eye. All personal matters, all cur- 
rent questions on which we might reasonably 
divide in other times, must now be looked at by 
everybody with no blurring because of double 
vision. To win victory in this war, and to do it 
as thoroughly and as quickly as we and our al- 
lies can do it — to see all vexations, hardships, 
toils, anxieties, losses, sorrows, with the glow of 
this hallowing purpose shining through them — 
this is the call sounded in the gospel of the 
single eye. 



84 



XXX 

" WHERE THERE IS NO VISION " 

Once more, as often before, war's terrors are 
calling out utterances which will live to greaten 
the life of the people. To make only a single 
comparison, what utterance looms highest out 
of the time of the Civil War? Doubtless it is the 
words closing Lincoln's Gettysburg speech — 
" That government of the people, by the people, 
for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
Out of the present war-time we venture to name 
for highest place the President's declaration that 
we must " make the world safe for democracy." 
It is striking indeed that this is actually the 
same in its three elements as Lincoln's great 
utterance. Democracy — what is that but 
government of the people, by the people, for the 
people? Make safe — that is the same as " shall 
not perish." Lincoln's " the earth " is the same 
as Wilson's " the world." 

But let us not deceive ourselves. War has 
its imperative place in making the world safe, 
no doubt. But it can only do a part of the work 
of making the world safe — for democracy above 
all. Bunker Hill and the war that followed only 
opened the way for a long process here to that 
end. Look at Russia now to see that conditions 
can be made safe for democracy only when 
85 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

democracy itself is made sound, and therefore 
safe. 

One profound issue is now looming awesomely. 
Autocracy has itself and its resources in hand. 
Therefore until now it has so marshalled the 
central powers as to defy the rest of the world, 
and after three and a half years it stands " balked 
but not defeated." What of democracj''? Even 
in the face of such diabolism, beholding such 
iron-heeled trampling of human treasures and 
sanctities, aroused to awareness of the utter 
imperilling of all it holds precious, democracy 
is hydra-headed, obstreperous, clamorous about 
divisive views and interests — bartering its 
birthright for some mess of pottage or other. 

Witness Russia's socialistic lurch, face to 
face with the vulture-like Teutonic talons ready 
to clutch out her vitals. Witness the muddled 
mouthings in England now when her prime 
minister ventures to establish a unifying head- 
ship for the far-reaching western front, including 
Italy, sorely smitten because aloof. Witness 
the disabling strikes which American labor 
perpetrates or tolerates, the manipulation of 
supplies and prices which American business 
interests devise, the higgledy-piggledy of con- 
flicting folk at Washington in the midst of which 
able and outright men are obliged to work out 
our herculean war measures. Nero fiddling 
while Rome burned is outclassed by such stu- 
pendous folly. 

86 



"WHERE THERE IS NO VISION" 

A supreme sentence indeed was that with 
which Senator Lodge ended his noble address 
at Princeton the other day — "As a poet of 
another race has said, ' Where there is no vision 
the people perish.' " No message could be more 
timely and vital to our welfare just now than 
these words in their full meaning. The senator 
used them, rightly enough, to crown his plea 
for the humanities, for the studies interpreta- 
tive of the higher experiences of the human 
spirit, as against the prevailing over-emphasis 
on the practical sciences. But this quotation is 
from the Hebrew Bible, and in old Israel vision 
meant seeing the moral, the spiritual, the divine 
— the highest experiences humanitj' knows — 
"the things by which men live." We now 
greatly need such a message. 

" Where there is no vision the people perish," 
the people whose welfare is the very essence of 
democracy. The old words of " a poet of 
another race " are everlastingly true; and vision 
must mean for us now what it meant when an 
ancient Hebrew uttered that mighty line. The 
people will not perish if only there is such vision 
that the people see the necessity of things moral, 
spiritual, divine. Now and henceforth all 
forces that make for the development of such 
vision must array themselves for unyielding 
advance, if we are to make the world safe for 
democracy. 



87 



XXXI 

"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" 

The dim range of that phrase is narrowing 
comfortingly now for many a home and heart, 
as November passes. " Where do you suppose 
he is? " was the question above all others a 
little time ago; and the map of France as a 
whole was wistfully scanned. But letters have 
been coming since then. These letters, to be 
sure, have borne not a few signs of the censor's 
watchfulness besides his official scrawl, and they 
have been headed " Somewhere in France " 
or perhaps just " France." None the less a 
story worth telhng has been spun and woven 
about those letters, and the story is of the nar- 
rowing of this dim range, the close scanning of 
a particular portion of the map of France. 

For in " his " letters, amid a lot of details 
quite ordinary and such as any censor would 
pass, have been certain casually interposed 
remarks — remarks that somehow struck the 
keen-hearted readers at home. And such is 
love's magic, these remarks were discovered to 
be cumulative. 

Thereupon how eagerly they were watched 

and studied as one letter followed anotherl 

And, lo, it came to pass that an account of the 

favor our boys have won with " the shop- 

88 



"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" 

keepers in our village because they are better 
paid and spend more freely than other soldiers 
of the allies," ends with the remark that " it 
is chow time now, for there goes the express to 

N "; next a description of "the peasant 

women in our village with their wooden shoes 
and black shawls," naturally enough leads to 
mention of the " unending rain and mud," 
manfully disposed of by the added words, 
" But we are used to this now, and everything 

is 0. K. with us, though the mud of the M 

valley is sure some mud." What censor can 
remember all the letters he reads and put two 
and two together? But the hearts at home can 
do it; and " Somewhere in France " is now 
narrowed to a region having a railroad to some 
town whose name begins with N and running 
through a river's valley whose name begins with 
M! It is a pretty puzzle, this seaching of the 
map of France for all the names beginning with 
N and M, there are so many of them! 

By and by a letter comes which closes talk 
about unforbidden things " over there " with 
this home-turning digression: "I got a bit 
hungry for the old pantry last night. Say, 
mother, what was the name, anyhow, of that 
jelly we used to mix with cream cheese and 
spread on crackers at bedtime? " What censor 
could know how a mother's heart would leap at 
sight of that! What censor would really care 
how closely her eyes would now scan the sections 
89 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

of the map of France circumscribed by N's 
and M's — or how, through tear-bright eyes 
there soon shines a joy sweeter than that of any 
shepherd calUng, " I have found my sheep 
which was lost! " 

At any rate, there in the narrowed section of 
the map of France, plainly printed in tiny letters, 
is the name of that jelly of the dear old days. 
And the word goes quickly to " his " sweet- 
heart — perchance his brave bride — that the 

" express for N " was on the road to Nancy, 

and the " mud of the M valley " was along 

the Meuse river, and " our village " is — but 
why print its name here, after all? If you know 
the name of that jelly folks mix with cream 
cheese and spread on crackers in American 
homes you can find it for yourself on the map of 
France — hard by Verdun, the terrible but 
glorious. That is where " he " is. That is the 
spot into which the dimly vague range of " Some- 
where in France " has been gathered up. That 
is now the prayer-shrine of the hearts at home. 



90 



XXXII 
THANKFULNESS AS A FINE ART 

The rough stone must be chiselled away that 
the sculptor's vision of statue or urn may stand 
forth. The devitalizing must be excluded that 
the author may make the printed page alive. 
The incongruous must be at least subordinated 
if not eliminated that the picture may impart 
the landscape's charm. To see, select and bring 
out that which shall dominate is the essence of 
all the fine arts. This is the secret of all high 
things in common life — courage, purity, cheer- 
fulness, tranquillity, success in business or home- 
making, and the like. And in times like these 
thankfulness can be achieved only by this 
method of the fine arts. Are there details in 
the present outlook of us all which can be 
assembled into a masterpiece of thanksgiving 
on this grim Thanksgiving Day? 

Gertrude Atherton has well said that there 
is only one thing more abominable than war, 
and that is the doctrine of non-resistance when 
duty and honor call. War has been best de- 
scribed by a word of four letters. But, as Dean 
Fenn of Harvard once said, men may be thankful 
for " that comforting doctrine of hell," because 
it is good to know that there is a point in the 
moral order beyond which iniquity cannot go. 
91 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

So of war. What if the powers of the world 
were now supine before the present outbreak of 
autocratic villainy? When we reflect on what 
Germany has done to accomplish Vv^hat she set 
herself to do, we may be thankful and, as the 
Outlook has declared, rejoice that we are at war 
against her. Horrible as war is, it would be 
more horrible if there were no " full measure of 
devotion " arrayed against such f rightfulness. 

And the disclosures of this arrayed devotion 
are such as to brighten the awful picture — 
deepening its lights, enriching its shadows, 
moving the seeing mind to profound gratitude 
in spite of all distress. The heroic response 
young men are making to the call to the colors; 
the tender bravery of mothers, wives, sweet- 
hearts; the devotement of their time and powers 
which so many business men are making to 
man the points of national need ; the measureless 
outpouring of money; the countless bands of 
women, forgetting their own comfort to provide 
for the comfort of our fighting men; the huge 
beneficent agencies organized, equipped and 
gloriously at work; the transforming spiritual 
awakening which has laid its spell on all sorts 
of people ; the large place our country has taken 
in the hope and the grateful honor of " four- 
fifths of the world " — these are the high lights 
in the thanksgiving masterpiece which they 
may produce who have learned the secret of 
making thankfulness a fine art. 
92 



XXXIII 
JERUSALEM IN WAR LIGHT 

" Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities." — 
Isaiah. 

The glare of war is now bringing Jerusalem 
and its environs into view out of the dimness of 
vanished centuries. It is a far-off and minor 
tumult that British guns are making amid those 
slumbrous hills, with the war's central roar in 
our ears. But we may well watch for the phan- 
tomlike yet real spectacle soon to emerge there. 
For that region, beyond any other on earth, is 
charged with certain sanctities conjured into 
unwonted vividness by this war's magic terrors. 

It is Advent now in all Christendom. Soon 
Christmas will come — the most terrific Yuletide 
the world has ever attempted to charm with the 
song and story of the Christ child. Does heart 
fail you in making ready for Christmas cheer and 
the gladness of gift-making and all the sweeten- 
ing of common life? The spell of the shepherds 
keeping watch over their flocks by night, of the 
sudden Gloria sounding in the brightened dark, 
of the manger and the mother and the Babe, of 
the Wise Men with rich gifts from far — does 
it all seem an empty dream? There, only six 
miles southward over the hills round about 
Jerusalem, is Bethlehem. It will show out in 
93 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

the war's flare presently, no doubt, as a reality. 
Its outstanding limestone hillcrest fixes the 
spot where Jesus was born. By all that Chris- 
tianity has done for our ever-troubled world, by 
all it is doing now and all it could do if men would 
only let it, Christian folk have reason to rejoice. 
And not less, but all the more, now when the 
world's plight is so pitiful, its need of leadership 
in a better way of life so obvious and overwhelm- 
ing! Advent and Christmas should be hope's 
undespairing sacrament this year. 

There, beside Jerusalem, companioning its 
hoary east wall across a little valley, is Mount 
Olivet. It has appeared in the dispatches 
already. The Bethany home was on its slope — 
the home the Christ Child loved in manhood, 
the home where he often found gladness and rest 
in the love it gave him. How the Bethany home 
has been manifolded in our land and time! 
Shall not love's brightness be maintained in your 
home this year? Would not your boj'^ now in 
camp or ship or at the battlefront have it so — 
and smile at his grim task when he thinks of it? 
Keep the home lights burning this season, of 
all years. Advent and Christmas should be 
love's brave sacrament this year. 

From the Bethany home the young man Jesus 
went to his suffering for a great cause. There, 
close by Jerusalem's north wall, is Calvary. As 
even Renan wrote of it: " There cannot be a 
difference of more than a few feet, when all is 
94 



JERUSALEM IN WAR LIGHT 

considered." Calvary is there — hard by the 
city wall. And surely Calvary, above any other 
historic site we know, stands for what has been 
carried over out of the past and reproduced in 
our time. Dutiful men are now climbing Cal- 
vary by throngs! What hallowing charm can 
be thrown around young men, grown from 
childhood to manhood and now gone from our 
homes to war's high sacrifice, that will yield 
anything like the solace and heartening uphold- 
ing to be found in thinking of them as comrades 
of Jesus on Calvary — as saviors who " follow 
in his train"? Advent and Christmas should 
be faith's hallowing sacrament this year. 

And as war's glare brings Jerusalem with 
these and other sanctities of memory into view, 
the British base is at Joppa by the sea, some 
thirty miles off. Charles Dudley Warner there 
wrote that of all places on earth save one, Joppa 
is the most worthy of pilgrimage by all lovers of 
liberty. For there a follower of him whose birth 
and loving life and heroic death centered about 
Jerusalem, uttered the words: " I perceive that 
God is no respecter of persons." Joppa, indeed, 
is the base of the democracy for which this 
world war is calling forth our " full measure of 
devotion." 



95 



XXXIV 
THE WOMEN AT HOME 

Thoroughly womanly is the Christmas mes- 
sage to be sent to the American soldiers in 
France from the women of America, with the 
President's approval. It reads: "The women 
of America are with you in spirit and in service. 
You are our standard-bearers and our hope. 
We love you, we believe in you and pray for 
you this Christmas season." The wording could 
not be bettered. It is laden with the character- 
istic contributions to masculine heroism which 
womanhood has made since our human world 
began. 

The beneficent effectiveness of women prob- 
ably never showed to greater advantage than 
in their present war work. A story has come 
across the ocean which bears telling testimony 
to the effect of their almost boundless practical 
achievements. A body of American soldiers 
were watching French troops start for the 
trenches. It was cold, and the Frenchmen were 
without sweaters. A quick transfer of the 
sweaters worn by the Americans was soon under 
v/ay, our men merrily helping their French 
comrades in getting into the warm garments. 
" But what will you yourselves do without 
them? " asked the grateful Frenchmen. "Oh, 
96 



THE WOMEN AT HOME 

our women at home will soon take care of that! " 
was the hearty answer. 

But it has ever been woman's way to add 
to her material ministries benefits that reach 
men's hearts and souls. The Christmas message 
to which we have referred is in keeping with 
this life-compassing grace of womankind. There 
is another unique instance just now of this 
womanly instinct which deserves public recog- 
nition. Red Cross women workers in and about 
Boston are now placing thousands of small cards 
in sweater pockets, folding them in other 
knitted articles and in the little khaki kits 
filled with useful supplies. These cards have 
been going to training camps. By authoriza- 
tion of government officials, they will now be 
sent to France. On each card are these words: 

A CREED 

" I will be true, for there are those who trust me; 
I will be pure, for there are those who care ; 
I will be strong, for there is much to suffer; 
I will be brave, for there is much to dare; 
I will be friend to all the poor and friendless; 
I will be giving and forget the gift ; 
I will be humble, for I know my weakness; 
I will look up, and laugh, and love, and lift." 



97 



XXXV 
THE PAIR ON THE MALL 

Tremont Street along the Common has been 
for years one of Boston's places of parade for 
youths and maids of divers sorts of sightliness. 
Hitherto the sidewalk adjoining this thorough- 
fare's stores and theatres has maintained a 
clear triumph in this respect over its neighbor, 
the mall along the Common. But at last the 
mall has scored victory. No pair ever drew the 
gaze of all on the other side of the street like 
the one to be seen on the mall any day or night 
this Christmas week. 

They first appeared, this young man and his 
attractive companion, at the Boylston Street 
end of the broad footway. Hand in hand the,y 
were; and they moved very slowly for such 
wintry weather. But they seemed to find com- 
fort and content in each other, no matter how 
the icy wind swirled about them or the snow 
mantled their forms. Thej'- were of great stature, 
the young woman's head reaching above the 
shoulder of her giant lover — for a lover the 
man obviously was. Opposite the Herald build- 
ing thej'^ passed — on toward Park Street 
Church. Their faces were ahght with mutual 
confidence touched with satisfaction, though all 
who looked upon them must have seen the 
98 



THE PAIR ON THE MALL 

shadow of something that was putting their 
souls to a mighty test. In their handclasp each 
seemed to find a joy totally unabashed as they 
faced the passing crowds. 

" What! " we hear readers who may not 
have seen them ask, " Are they a betrothed 
couple on their way to marriage in Park Street 
Church? " We venture only to reply that there 
is doubtless a union of heart between this pair 
as sacred and deep as any marriage ever was. 

The man is clad in khaki. His left arm — 
its hand is missing — is freshly bound and 
swung in white bandages. His head is com- 
pletely swathed, the bandaging being skilfully 
done to leave mouth and nose and eyes un- 
obstructed save by the shadow of pain; and 
gratitude penetrates, almost dispels that be- 
clouding. 

She is woman-grown, though young. Her 
form is full of womanly comeliness. Her face, 
too, is overcast as by shadow. But this is evi- 
dently the result of sympathy rather than her 
own bodily suffering — sympathy resolute, rescu- 
ing, heroic. The way she holds the hand of 
the wounded man leaves no doubt as to that. 

Along their way up the mall banners are set. 
On these banners are inscribed ascending num- 
bers up to 370,000 by Park Street Church. 
Over the numbers are the words: " Come 
Help Us — Join Now." The soldier and his 
companion evidently mean to traverse the full 
99 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

length of that Hne of wind-tossed banners, let 
the winter weather howl as it will. And the 
woman's free hand is extended, as if appeahng 
for help in her care of the soldier. Her face is 
wistful — yearning, as she gazes up the long 
mall! On her arm and headpiece, often sifted 
over with snow — just as it must often be 
" over there " — glows the sacred symbol of 
a Red Cross nurse. 

Only dumb figures? But they visualize the 
most appeahng reahties! Join the Red Cross — 
help the pair on the mall along their way to 
Park Street Church. 



100 



XXXVI 

LONDON BRIDGE 

She was a social settlement worker, leading a 
group of children in a squalid quarter of a city 
as the war-time Christmastide came on. The 
children were of various races and religions. 
They were playing " London Bridge." 

An archway of arms was made, just as we 
all used to make the like in our childhood; and 
to the accompaniment of voices singing 

" London Bridge is falling down — 
Falling down — falling down," 

one after another was moving forward to be 
caught by two pairs of arms brought down 
around this child and that. The whispered 
choice given to each willing captive — who does 
not remember it? 

But something was going wrong. The young 
social worker, keen for the happiness of all her 
charge, noticed a strange miscarriage in the 
game. The alignment on one side was growing 
much faster than the other. Nearly all the 
children were making the same choice. 

This was ominous, as every worker with 

children knows. " What can the choice that is 

winning so many be? " she queried. For each 

of the two small leaders in the game, of course, 

101 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

had made up her own lure of words to win to her 
side the " choosers." It would never do for the 
trusted friend of all to risk the chance of seeming 
to do better by one side than the other — not 
in working with children. It doesn't do with 
their elders either, so far as we have observed 
the matter. 

By and by the young woman herself, eager to 
fathom this very practical mystery, moved 
forward — passed under the archway of arms. 

Down came London Bridge around her. 
She stood with the two pairs of child-arms 
shutting her in. There was the thrill and flurry 
of rapture in the whole company which is usual 
at such times in children's games. Then came 
the whispering of the choices. This is what she 
heard first: 

" Will you choose the world with all the fine 
stores and houses in it? " 

This seemed alluring indeed. " That must be 
the winning one! " she said to herself; "no 
wonder nearly all the children are lining up on 
one side with such an offer, poor little things! " 

" That's what is winning a lot of grown-ups 
nowadays!" we interposed, as the story was 
being told. 

" But wait — listen! " came the answer. 
There was a hush in the voice and a look of 
wonder in the eyes, betokening a sense of some- 
thing for the soul — more beautiful than even 
the winsome cunning of childhood ways. 
102 



LONDON BRIDGE 

Holding her peace, she turned between the 
enclosing arms, as it was only fair that she 
should do, to hear the other overture. This is 
what was now whispered: 

" Will you choose the Catholic Church with 
the whole of heaven and our Father God? " 

The quaint wording, its simplicity and scope, 
impressed the listener quite as much as the 
unexpected ground of appeal. To make sure of 
what was said she asked that it be repeated. 

" Will you choose the Catholic Church with 
the whole of heaven and our Father God? " 
was whispered once more. And the child whose 
earnest face was at the teacher's ear was only 
about nine years old! 

Thinking that she would set a good example 
for the many children who had most likely 
chosen " the world with all the fine stores and 
houses in it," and withal wishing to even up the 
game for the sake of the losing girl, she made 
this second proffer her choice, though she herself 
was a Protestant minister's daughter. 

Imagine her surprise when she was gleefully 
bidden to join the long line where most of the 
" choosers " stood. 

" Hurrah for that little Irish girl!" we cried. 

" Irish? " The rising inflection arched the 
story-teller's brows. 

" Oh! " we stammered. " Wasn't she Irish? " 

" I wondered about that myself — her eyes 
were so softly dark." 

103 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

" Irish or what not, honor to her for bethink- 
ing herself of an appeal so great and hitting upon 
a wording of it so simple yet complete, direct yet 
captivating." 

" Perhaps she was recalling something that 
had been taught her." 

" All the more, in that case, honor to her for 
standing forth among her mates and bravely 
trusting it to win — whispering it to all while 
she heard her rival presenting * the world with 
all the fine stores and houses in it.' " 

"Yes; and what the others did, so — un- 
flinchingly? — so unanimously any way, struck 
me as fine." 

" Catholics, of course? " 

" Most of them, I think." 

" All right, hurrah for them, too, for being 
proof against the world's beguilements, at least 
enough to respond to such a call by choosing 
their church on earth with what it offers above 
the earth, against the world and all that is 
thereini Come to think of it, as those little 
urchins saw things the choice they faced was 
ever so much like what was set before One who 
was long ago led up into * an exceeding high 
mountain.' And according to their lights they 
sided with Him." 

" They make a pretty picture for all of us 
who usually let the world win us — don't they? 
Life for us all is ever so much like their game of 
London Bridge, isn't it? " 
104 



LONDON BRIDGE 

" Let's see — through an archway of arms, of 
human relationships and associations, we pass 
to a choice — and the choices offered us are 
actually the same as those in their game. But 
nearly all of us nowadays are lined up on the 
world's side by the choice we make ours — the 
likeness breaks down, you see." 

" Are you sure of that? " Thus the young- 
hearted social worker gently challenged our 
pessimism. 

" Why — yes — everybody says so. But 
what makes you ask? " 

" Those children! " 

" Tell me all your thoughts." 

" I'm wondering whether the picture they 
made isn't more than pretty, more than beauti- 
ful — whether it isn't true to life, really a little 
glimpse of things as they actually are in the 
world." 

" Go on," said we, smiling encouragement. 

" Well, for instance, Christmas is almost here. 
It certainly seems as if its ' peace on earth, good 
will among men ' can hardly mean much to 
anybody in the roar war is making these days. 
But those children have set me thinking how 
many the world over will listen even now for 
the sweet old song of peace and good will, and 
hear it, and respond to it deep in their hearts, 
more earnestly now than ever — choosing better 
than we think, just as those children were doing 
when I thought they weren't. It makes me 
105 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

keep saying over those words about * a great 
multitude no man can number/ how they * came 
up out of the great tribulation/ and the rest of 
it. So they must be here somewhere now, you 
see! I like to think of the thousands of kind 
things these people will do in response to the 
call that is heard most clearly at Christmas 
time. And ever so many of them, faulty as 
they are, will go on all the days of the year try- 
ing to choose — well, to choose ' the church with 
the whole of heaven and our Father God.' " 

" Bless you, my dear," said one who was 
listening with us, " you make me think of the 
old prophet's prayer for the opening of two 
young eyes that they might see — and how they 
soon saw the hosts of the Lord all round about! " 

Does any one need to be told that a picture of 
children playing London Bridge shines in our 
thoughts this clouded Christmastide? And one 
figure stands out, charming us most of all. It 
is that little girl — she who dared to make the 
Christian appeal in a scene of common life, 
bravely trusting it to win, even as the hopeful 
Christmas angels did long ago in the midst of 
poor shepherds. 



106 



XXXVII 
LIGHT YOUR CHRISTMAS CANDLES 

Just a year ago all Boston and its environs 
were singing " Brighten the Corner Where 
You Are." Have you forgotten that simple yet 
altogether irresistible song? Try whistling it; 
then, as the words come back to mind, sing it 
again. There is greater need of its spell this 
year than last, surely; and there is no better 
call to sound this Christmas Eve. For the 
essential spirit of Christmastide is to brighten 
each nook of common life — lighting up the 
shadows we cannot wholly dispel, kindling the 
gleam of cheer and good-will in the little corner 
of the struggling world where we ourselves are. 
We can do this if we will; for the old words are 
as true as they are beautiful, " The spirit of 
man is the candle of the Lord." 

Why is it that candles have been lighted at 
Christmas-time for so many centuries? Be- 
cause there has always been occasion for signaliz- 
ing the fact that Christmas cheer is and must 
ever be an overcoming of gloom by enkindled 
light. The story of the very first Christmas has 
its dark side. There was no room in the inn for 
the weary young mother, great with child, amid 
the noisy jostle of farmers, merchants, soldiers; 
and Herod's massacre of Bethlehem children 
sent black terror to all loving hearts. There has 
107 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

been many a Christmas darkened by war and 
calamity since then. The ancient Yuletide of 
nature-worshipping races in Europe, which has, 
in fact, fixed the season for the celebration of 
that first Christmas, actually marked the time 
of winter's completest darkening. At Yuletide 
they rejoiced because the sun was at its solstice — 
was stopping in its wintry descent and would 
turn to bring light and warmth and summer 
again. Therefore, they lighted candles, as the 
visible symbol of their brave inward cheer. 
Christians keeping Christmas saw the fine 
significance of the candle shining in the dark, 
and adopted it as a token of their own over- 
coming cheer and good hope. 

Christendom never faced a darker Christmas 
than the one we now keep. But it is certain 
that the world never saw such vast agencies 
of mercy and help as are at work everywhere 
in the present war-welter. Ours is a world in 
which love refuses to cower and yield! See to 
it that you help maintain this triumph of the 
human spirit. ** Brighten the corner where 
you are." Light your Christmas candles — 
literally if you enjoy the charm of a quaint old 
custom, or else in some other way let your 
dwelling's brightness bespeak your cheer even 
now. And make sure that the light in your 
window shines on a Red Cross. For that is the 
token that you are helping to throw a gleam 
of love's Hght " over there," as well as at home. 
108 



XXXVIII 
A CHRISTMAS SONG 

Come, my heart, canst thou not hear it, 

Mid the tumult of thy days? 
Catch the old sweet song of angels. 

Join thy voice to swell their praise! 
Hast thou never shared the blessing, 

Never known kind Heaven's gift? 
Bethlehem thy Saviour cradled! 

Heart of mine, a song uplift. 

First to hear where drowsing shepherds. 

Sore afraid that winter's night; 
Soon to Bethlehem they hurried — 

Lo, the song they heard was right! 
Ever since, all they who hear it 

Find a Saviour where they dwell; 
Sing it, heart! Who knows what toilers 

Thou the Christward way shalt tell? 

Long ago the angels vanished. 

Oh, their song is sounding still! 
Millions now with hope are singing, 

" Peace on earth, to men good will." 
Sing, my heart! Though peace may tarry. 

Sing good will amid the strife! 
Join the old sweet song whose music 

Will attune to Heav'n thy life. 
109 



XXXIX 

AS YEARS PASS 

"If it were feasible," says Senator Lodge in 
the Senate chamber, " and if I were a despot, 
and could do it by a single stroke, I would wipe 
drink off the face of the earth." 

" Oh," shouts Billy Sunday in his tabernacle, 
" Oh, if I were only God for four minutes! " — 
then he thunders what he would do with the 
same and certain other evils. 

Many are saying as this distraught j^ear ends: 
" If God has the power to stop all these horrors 
of war, why doesn't He do it — how can He be 
good if He allows such things to go on?" 

Meanwhile the Father of all, having the 
sovereign power and being God not for a Httle 
but forever, does not wipe the earth of evils, or 
smash all workers of iniquity, or stop the 
world's man-made troubles outright. No; he 
lets his sons and daughters keep their dower of 
freedom, while they muddle on. Nothing that 
goodness and mercy, law and love can devise to 
help them is left undone. He warns them by 
countless danger signals, prohibits, enjoins, 
restrains by ways and means now sharp, now 
tender, throws the guard of the good round 
about their wayward lives unfailingly. And He 
waits with yearning patience, never despairing 
110 



AS YEARS PASS 

— waits for His children to learn to live as He 
longs to have them live. 

So man has come to what he is, and will come 
to what he is to be. For this is the way of the 
Everlasting Father. 



Ill 



XL 

JACOB'S LADDER IN TO-DAY'S NEWS 

" We rise by the things that are under our feet, 
By what we have mastered of good and gain, 
By the pride deposed and the passion slain, 
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet. 

" Only in dreams is a ladder thrown 
From the weary earth to the sapphire walls; 
But the dreams depart, and the vision fades, 
And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone." 

— J. G. Holland. 

The British advance through Palestine is 
renewing acquaintance with Bible lore for many. 
Our allies have now traversed about a third of 
the distance marked off in the ancient phrase, 
" From Dan to Beersheba," which has carried 
over into modern speech. First, coming up from 
the south, they brought Beersheba and Hebron, 
Abraham's home region, into the newspapers. 
Then they caused Jerusalem and Bethlehem to 
emerge in the day's news as actualities, lending 
unique enhancement to a shadowed Christmas- 
tide; and with them Joppa, the seaport where a 
Hebrew Christian voiced the principle of de- 
mocracy, over which this world-war is waging. 
Now the British have pushed a dozen miles 
northward from Jerusalem and are battling at 
Bethel. A fine Bible story is laid at Bethel, one 
112 



JACOB'S LADDER IN TO-DAY'S NEWS 

which yields a message greatly needed as 
January brings us into the fateful year, 1918. 

It was at Bethel that Jacob, journeying up 
from Beersheba and in trouble over the robbing 
of his brother in the matter of his natural rights, 
had his dream of the ladder reaching from earth 
to heaven. The British troops will see there, 
even now, the surroundings which made the 
setting for that dream. Round about the little 
plain's chaos of rocks and loose stones, amid 
which the weary and distraught man " took 
one of the stones of that place, and put it under 
his head, and lay down in that place to sleep " 
as the sun was setting, are still seen the limestone 
terraces which make flights of steps up the 
encompassing hillsides. We all know how the 
things of real life enter into the texture of 
dreams. At any rate, the dream came; and 
Jacob's ladder was added to the treasury of the 
human spirit. 

No imagery could more vividly portray what 
he needed to be assured of then, and what many 
need now. In times of trouble, usually brought 
on by some sort of human wrong-doing, as was 
the case then and is surely so on a vast scale 
now, men and women feel that God must be 
turned against them. Depression then deepens 
to the gloom of despair. Hope flickers out, 
cheer fades away, courage expires. In that 
plight, Jacob saw in his dream, rising from the 
very place of his depression and reaching to 
113 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

heaven, a ladder. Upon it angels were going up 
and coming back; and from its top a voice 
sounded: " I will be with thee, and will keep 
thee, and will bless thee, and will make thee a 
blessing." Only a dream? But that dream 
gathered up in clear visualization the inbred 
but overwhelmed convictions of his soul — of 
all devout souls. It cheered Jacob beyond tell- 
ing. When he was wide awake, he stood in 
morning light brighter than sunshine, and said, 
" Surely God is in this place, and I knew it not." 
That realization heartened him, mastering his 
life through all gruelling experiences. 

This Bethel story, now that the British ad- 
vance has brought it to modern notice, is timely 
reading for days like these. 

" For the love of God is broader 

Than the measure of man's mind, 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind." 



114 



XLI 

THE MYSTERY OF THE SMOKING 
LEDGE 

Have you read the story? A trapper amid the 
snow-hushed hills of western Massachusetts, a 
few days ago, spied smoke issuing from a ledge 
of rocks in the depths of a dense forest. He did 
not know what to make of it. All sorts of 
fearsome notions beset him as he ventured on 
attempts to solve the mystery. But when he 
had summoned help and they went in at the 
opening detected, bearing lanterns, and all 
hands armed to meet whatever might be en- 
countered, they discovered a lone man bending 
over a small fire in the act of roasting a bit of 
meat. And they learned from him that he was 
living there, in January weather, to escape the 
service men are summoned to render in war- 
time! 

The mystery of the smoking ledge would 
serve somebody well to point a moral or adorn a 
tale. For most of life's experiences that puzzle 
and trouble us mortals are much like this of 
the smoking ledge. We conjure up no end of 
dire thoughts about them — about diseases, 
disasters, and especiall.y such distresses as are 
now come on the world, when the whole of 
civilized life is like a smoking ledge. We think 
115 



MYSTERY OF THE SMOKING LEDGE 

of nature as malign, of fateful evil powers as 
lying in ambush against us, even of God himself 
as causing things which confound us as we go 
the rounds of common life. But by and by we 
discover, in one instance after another, precisely 
what this trapper did — that the things which 
alarm and puzzle and trouble us are really due 
to some human aberration from right doing. 
We are wrong in thinking that fate or nature or 
God are responsible for the mysteries of suffer- 
ing and sorrow. The truth is that some human 
being who has gone wrong is down under most 
of the smoking ledges that mystify us. To get 
this clear in one's mind is of the greatest im- 
portance, especially in times like these. 

This young man hid under the smoking ledge 
told a story vividly significant. He was there to 
escape the duty of all when all that we cherish 
is imperilled. He confessed that he had crept 
out at night to buy food in a town miles away — 
he couldn't subsist without drawing on the com- 
mon provisions for welfare which are now in 
jeopardy. He acknowledged having been obhged 
by illness in his cave to go and secretly spend a 
week in a hotel's comfort — he would have 
died like a wild animal but for such shelter in 
the established order he was refusing to help 
maintain. He had even tramped far through the 
snow on a winter night to peer through a window 
at his sister's family, happy around their home's 
bright fireplace — his man's heart, craven as it 
116 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

was, longed for a glimpse of those sanctities 
which sound-hearted men are now going forth 
to safeguard. Food, shelter, the realm of love! 
These are the primary human imperatives, as 
even the man under the smoking ledge bears 
witness. And these, with many other blessings, 
are now put in peril by ruthless foes, overseas 
and here at home as truly. Could anything 
show the folly and wrong of failing to defend 
them more strikingly than the story of this man 
under the smoldng ledge? 



117 



XLII 

ENTER NEW ACTORS ON AN 
ANCIENT STAGE 

" British air service," says the latest dispatch 
from Palestine, " has executed bombing raids 
on the enemy at Jenin." To the general reader 
this means little. But to those who understand 
its import this bit of news is like the signal when 
the curtain is about to rise on a stage scene of 
classic awesomeness. The British troops, with 
captured Jerusalem behind them and the rocky 
hills of Samaria ahead, are still pushing north- 
ward — they have " executed bombing air raids 
on the enemy at Jenin." Now, Jenin is an 
ancient Moslem village, where the northern- 
most hills of Samaria slope down to the strangely- 
contrasted plain of Esdraelon — there where 
the traveler used to see, beside an old well, 
those dusky girls with water jars, whose wonder- 
ful black eyes and white teeth charmed their 
furtive smiles! And this plain of Esdraelon is 
history-charmed, indeed. 

It has been well said that this plain is, in its 
natural setting, Hke a vast theatre with a clearly- 
defined stage having its proper entrances and 
exits. For it is walled in from the Mediterranean 
by the ridge of Carmel, the hills of Gahlee hold- 
ing Nazareth on the north, shapely Mt. Tabor 
118 



NEW ACTORS ON AN ANCIENT STAGE 

and Little Hermon and Gilboa on the east, and 
Samaria's hills southward; and it has bays of 
its own levels running out between these en- 
compassing heights like the wings of a theatre's 
stage. In keeping with this strilcing natural 
setting, on this plain how many of time's star 
actors have appeared in historj^'s changing hghts! 
Here Israel's men were led to victor}^ by two 
women in the battle celebrated by that exultant 
song preserved in the fifth chapter of Judges; 
here Gideon, with his picked men, routed their 
foes by the ruse of setting up a great clamor as 
they broke the pitchers that concealed their 
flaring torches in a night attack; here King 
Saul fell and his son Jonathan, for whom David 
composed that incomparable battle dirge, which 
ends: 

" I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; 
Very pleasant hast thou been unto me; 
Thy love to me was wonderful, 
Passing the love of women. 
How are the mighty fallen. 
And the weapons of war perished! " 

Here, too, Alexander the Great swept all 
before him. Here Antiochus moved to defeat 
with his lumbering elephants and war engines. 
Here Mark Antony and Titus led victorious 
Roman legions, early Christian warriors flocked 
and built churches, Moslem hordes put them to 
flight. Here the Crusaders floated their proud 
ensigns, and here, in the twelfth century, the 
119 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

Moslems under Saladin crushed their vain- 
glorious hopes forever. Here in the early nine- 
teenth century Napoleon made his first great 
retreat. 

Now, after another century, the British are 
making air raids on Jenin and slowly pushing 
their way to this beautiful but fateful plain. 
What will happen there soon, in the great duel 
between Germany and England for control of 
the route to India and the East? For that is 
what the struggle in Palestine really is. Accord- 
ing to Biblical forecast, Armageddon, the final 
great encounter between the forces of good and 
of evil, will be fought at this unmatched battle- 
field. It is too soon, no doubt, to expect that 
decisive conflict anywhere yet. But we may 
watch, with a keen sense of dramatic possibili- 
ties, when a scene of the present world-war is 
staged on the reputedly blood-reddened plain of 
Esdraelon. 



120 



XLIII 

A TEXT FOR THE TIMES 

"We are not of them that shrink hack unto per- 
dition; hut of them that have faith unto the gaining 
of the soul." — Hebrews 10 : 39. 

The public mind, as we face the stupendous 
issues of 1918, is in a state much hke that of 
riders on the whirhng hobby-horses at a circus. 
The people are considerably " razzle-dazzled." 
They feel the need of something to get hold of 
to steady their heads. We propose, as a first- 
rate mental and spiritual steadier, this stanch 
text from a certain splendid piece of literature. 

We have been pouring out money to make 
all sorts of huge funds; we have been sending 
our young men to training camps and across the 
sea; hosts of women have been achieving im- 
mense outputs of handwork for use in camp and 
field and hospital; business men have been 
doing their level best to handle their affairs in 
loyal conformity to fuel and food, shipping and 
closure mandates. Suddenly a big jolt cam?. 
Senator Chamberlain's speech, arraigning the 
government for not getting things done, voiced 
a widespread uneasiness, not to say disgust, and 
precipitated a general vociferation at Washing- 
ton and throughout the press. 
121 



WAR-TIME ''OVER HERE" 

But hardly has the country uttered its de- 
mand that matters be set right for going ahead 
with all speed, when we hear, as shown through 
a Washington correspondent in a letter of 
yesterday, that there have been bewildering 
shifts in what our allies have called on us to do. 
First, he points out, we were to center our efforts 
chiefly on preparing and forwarding war supplies 
with foodstuffs and money. When Marshal 
Joffre became our guest he pleaded that we send 
men to join the fighting — that we do so as 
soon as possible. A relatively small force of 
American troops, it was urged, would have a 
telling effect on the morale of the French and 
British hosts. We started in on this altogether 
different process. Then a call began to sound 
across the sea for us to send a host of men — 
to come and make an overwhelming man- 
power, such as alone could win the war. 

Obviously all this required enormous gear- 
shifting. However much we may insist on the 
defects of certain men in power and their 
methods, it is only fair to recognize that such 
throwing of the clutch in the midst of huge 
proceedings must have inevitably worked great 
confusion. The American mind has an instinct 
to be fair. The present storm of criticism will 
doubtless speed preparations for victorious war. 
But it will work for good if our people remember 
these circumstances and thereby ard themselves 
to regain good courage and confidence. It is 
122 



A TEXT FOR THE TIMES 

a time when we all need to " get hold of some- 
thing to steady our heads." 

Try the text we have suggested. Commit it 
to memory. Say it over when you are low- 
spirited. Repeat it to the down-hearted. Phrase 
by phrase, it gathers up the truths that will 
empower us for these times. We are not of them 
that shrink back — our history is proof. Shrink- 
ing back is unto perdition — the German ruth- 
lessness leaves no doubt. We are of them that 
have faith — faith in ourselves, our ideals, our 
powers and resources, our cause, our heroic 
allies, and our righteous God. And this faith is 
" unto the gaining of the soul " of this nation — 
now, as it was when Lincoln struggled through 
the last great conflict. 



123 



XLIV 
" BE NOT WEARY IN BAD DOING " 

No, reader, the above heading is not, as you 
probably think, " one more thing gone wrong, 
Kke almost everything else nowadays." It looks 
Uke a blunder, but it really isn't. The words you 
suppose to be correct, " Be not weary in well- 
doing," are the excellent advice of an ancient 
philosopher; but we are now commending the 
counsel of a modern philosopher — one who 
still walks Boston streets. He has seen the need 
of turning the other side of the ancient advice by 
saying, " Be not weary in bad doing." It occurs 
to us that this is a good time to bring Professor 
Palmer's sage bon mot to general notice — so 
many things seem to be badly done just now. 

Our philosopher, speaking of winning success 
as a writer, names as the crowning prerequisite 
" Refusal to lose heart." No matter what mis- 
takes and failures are made, " so long as one is 
getting oneself hammered into shape " there 
must be no " growing weary in bad doing." 
That advice rings true in all sorts of Hfe matters. 
The way men and women bear themselves when 
things are badly done, by themselves or others, 
shows their metal and determines the outcome. 
All Americans greatly need to be reminded of 
this just now, 

124 



"BE NOT WEARY IN BAD DOING" 

We are in the midst of surging dissatisfaction. 
Many matters touching us personally and many 
others involving our fate as a nation seem to be 
badly handled. The deeper sacrifices of war 
have not yet brought the heroic mood which 
welds a whole people into glowing oneness. We 
are threshing out ways and means. We are call- 
ing the responsible heads of government to an 
accounting. There is unquestionably much to 
warrant this, allowing for all possible misappre- 
hension of facts. There will result a definite 
girding up of officials and methods and the whole 
war-maldng process. All this had to be under- 
gone in our Civil War, as any biography of Lin- 
coln abundantly shows. It has been passed 
through by our great allies in the present war. 
" You will come through it all right, as we did," 
said an eminent Englishman in Boston a few 
days ago. We must see all in this larger light 
and " refuse to lose heart." 

Near the end of the war for the Union, refer- 
ring to precisely such experiences, Lincoln said: 
" What has occurred in this case must ever recur 
in similar cases. Human nature will not change. 
In any future great national trial, compared 
with the men of this we shall have as weak and 
as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as 
good." Therefore, there must now be no relax- 
ing of devotion to duty, no slackening of zeal in 
doing all that private citizens can do to win this 
war. Disappointments and blunders, delays and 
125 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

failures must be faced with the reassuring re- 
membrance that we are " getting ourselves ham- 
mered into shape." And through all there must 
be no " growing weary in bad doing." 



126 



XLV 

OUR BENEFACTOR — THE SUN 

" Ah, passing few are they who speak, 

Wild, stormy March, in praise of thee, 
Yet though thy winds are loud and bleak, 
Thou art a welcome month to me. 

" For thou, to northern lands, again 

The glad and glorious sun doth bring, 
And thou hast joined the gentle train 
And wear'st the gentle name of Spring." 

— Bryant. 

" A pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold 
the sun," and this ancient verdict will be ren- 
dered from these March days onward as never 
before in our generation. For the winter now 
nearly over and gone has been an uncommonly 
hard one; both nature and human affairs have 
gone to extremes in the conditions developed. 
Even dear old nature, too, has seemed to be pos- 
sessed by demons warring on life and all its 
blessings. Therefore will mortals now hail the 
sun's triumphing with more than ordinary glad- 
ness. The first signs thereof are like glimpses of 
distant banners to long-beleaguered men; when 
the sun shall have brought about us the throng- 
ing life of springtime it will be as w^hen into a 
grimly defended city an army of deliverance 
surges. 

127 



WAR-TIME ''OVER HERE" 

While we await this transformation of our lot 
— soon, very soon, to be consummated — it is 
heartening to recall that " the glad and glorious 
sun " has really been our faithful benefactor all 
winter long. Though millions of miles away, 
this supreme reality in nature has held our 
troubled earth from plunging headlong through 
space — has kept it secure in its ponderous 
flight, as it swept on a milhon and a half miles 
each day, eighteen miles a second, whirling on its 
axis at the dizzy rate of nearly 25,000 miles a day. 
We have not in the least realized all this, the ap- 
peal of our planet through the prayer of gravita- 
tion has been so availing and the response of the 
sun's power so unfailing. But, in truth, through- 
out the winter of our discontent, through its 
bleakest days and bitterest nights, the sun was 
all the while swinging our earth onward to a 
position relative to itself which would cause 
spring's ecstasies to break forth as we shall soon 
witness them. 

More than that, the coal we burned, when we 
could get it in spite of man's muddling, to over- 
come the winter's cold, was made to grow in its 
original vegetation ages ago by the same sun ; the 
wood that enclosed our homes thus warmed, and 
shut out the storms, the sun grew in more recent 
years; and day by day it sent its rays to sterilize 
disease germs, purify the air we breathed, and 
cheer us while snows lay deep and winds were 
wild. We could not have survived the winter 
128 



OUR BENEFACTOR — THE SUN 

without these ministries, and but for the sun 
our earth itself would now be a shattered mass 
of wreckage somewhere in the abysses of space — 
we only lifeless little flecks in its rubbish. 

These ceaseless and vast benefactions should 
not be allowed to go without sterling joy therein. 
In consequence of them, the gladness of shining 
grass, the charm of peeping leaves and buds and 
sweet-faced flowers, the songs of birds accom- 
panying our heart-beats, will soon match the 
tingling newness of hfe in ourselves, and we 
shall make ready with confidence for the yield 
of field and orchard where all has been most 
bleak and bare so long. 

No wonder primitive men worshipped the 
sun. Nor is it without warrant that in this 
demonstrable wonder-work for us we moderns 
see a likeness of the care divine that " moves in 
a mysterious way his wonders to perform." 



129 



XL VI 
"BUT PETER FOLLOWED" 

It is time for somebody to say a word for 
Peter. A magazine of repute is exploiting an 
article entitled " Peter Sat by the Fire Warming 
Himself." This article charges that our clergy- 
men are doing much like Peter in the present 
world tragedy. Eminent religious journals have 
retorted with much force that religious leaders, 
as well as the rank and file of pastors, are doing 
quite the opposite of sitting by the fire warming 
themselves. Be that as it may, there is another 
word of far greater importance to be spoken — 
proclaimed, in fact, until it rings in people's 
ears. Incidentally, it will throw a different 
light on Peter and his present - day suc- 
cessors. 

Recall the story. Poor Peter, everlastingly 
silhouetted in the firelight as he warmed himself, 
should be seen as the whole story shows him. He 
it was who had drawn his sword and begun using 
it man-fashion in the glare of the torches, that 
midnight when the great tragedy started. When 
his Master was led away bj'' his enemies and 
" they all forsook him and fled," all the four 
accounts say, " but Peter followed " — afar at 
first, but soon to the very door where the 
tragedy was deepening. His breakdown at 
130 



"BUT PETER FOLLOWED" 

last, under the terrific strain inside that door, 
must be viewed in remembrance of all this. 
Furthermore, be it remembered, Peter was not 
the only one who, as he sat by the fire warming 
himself, was taking the situation as quiescently 
as possible under the circumstances. Where 
was Matthew, the tax collector? Where was 
James, the hard-headed and practical man? 
Where were those women of substance — the 
wife of King Herod's steward, and the rest? 
Judas was stealthily holding his gains until 
shame undid him, as everybody knows. But 
where were these others? When they emerge 
into view again in the story, they were " stand- 
ing afar off " — just looking on! " But Peter 
followed." 

We have said enough. The ministers of 
religion must not be made " the goat " now. 
Allowing for all that can justly be maintained as 
to their shortcomings, they are at least not 
worse than the rest of us as regards this matter 
of sitting by the fire warming ourselves. We 
are all doing that, more or less, to date. All 
classes of Americans are entirely too quiescent, 
too self-indulgent, too willing to let matters 
take their course while they themselves take 
care of their own comfort and welfare. We all 
need to quit such folly. We are at war. We are, 
hour by hour, entering a stupendous struggle — 
the most humanly fateful conflict in history. 
And we as a people are, on the whole, still taking 
131 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

our ease, still looking out for our own comfort — 
sitting by the fire warming ourselves. Wake 
up, and square yourself to help win the war, 
everybody! 



132 



XL VI I 
" DEEP CALLETH UNTO DEEP " 

A New York magazine gives editorial ap- 
proval to a declaration of five Berlin clergymen 
which it prints in full. It calls on its readers to 
join in getting this declaration published in 
American newspapers throughout the country. 

The tone of this declaration is apparently 
noble and meant to be magnanimous. The five 
Berlin pastors avow that it is made in conjunc- 
tion with many Protestant men and women in 
German}'. This is important, as a matter of 
fact. " Conscious," they declare, " of the Chris- 
tian heritage and Christian aims which we hold 
in common with them, we extend to all fellow 
believers, to those in enemy countries also, our 
heartfelt and brotherly greeting." To stop there 
would be nothing short of Judas-like, betraying 
with a kiss. 

But the declaration immediately adds: " We 
recognize the deepest causes of the present war 
to lie in the anti-Christian powers which 
control the lives of the people of the 
earth, their mutual suspicion, their wor- 
ship of force, and their covetousness." This, 
coming from Berlin and from men of recog- 
nized standing, may be one of the most signifi- 
cant news items which has made its way to the 
133 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

world outside the German wall of fire. Are the 
German church folk really recognizing all this at 
last? Note how each phrase of the sentence just 
quoted goes to the core of the indictment which 
mankind is now pressing against Germany. 
Specially note that these German pastors say 
these dire charges are true of " the powers that 
control the lives of the people of the earth." To 
be sure, other governments are included in this 
arraignment; but so is their own. The words 
used clearly disclose that they are distinguishing 
between the German people and their govern- 
ment. 

The point of great moment is .that German 
pastors have dared to do this — have dared to 
lay such charges against their government. Who 
can put into words the vast connotation of what 
that fact may signal to the world? It may be 
that therein once more " deep calleth unto 
deep " — that the depths of the German con- 
science and godly fear are therein calling unto 
the depths of righteous judgment and sacrificial 
suffering to which the rest of the world has 
resorted. It may be that this German declara- 
tion opens the way to those words which follow 
the psalmist's " deep calleth unto deep " — those 
trouble-conquering words, " Hope thou in God." 

Yet we must not for a moment let our war- 
making zeal be slackened by this declaration's 
possible import. The plea of these German 
pastors for " a peace by mutual agreement and 
134 



"DEEP CALLETH UNTO DEEP" 

reconciKation " can be sanely complied with 
only when we have broken and bound the dia- 
bolical power which controls the lives of the 
German people and with ruthless fury is seeking 
to crush and so control our lives also. These 
German " fellow believers " have only con- 
firmed our reasons for thus proceeding. We 
know they are right about their controlling 
power, even though they misunderstand the 
spirit of our own government. There can be no 
peace, for them or for us, while such a power is 
unmanacled, and, if it must be, destroyed. 
Therefore, fight we must, until that power 
which controls their lives is stripped of strength 
to trample ours. Then we shall be ready for a 
peace by mutual agreement and reconciliation. 



135 



XLVIII 
RISING TO THE HEROIC MOOD 

" The hero is not fed on sweets; 
Daily his own heart he eats." 

— Emerson. 

Not a few born and bred Americans are just 
now more dangerous than even the German 
spies whose schemings demand unsparing mea- 
sures. The need of looking out for them is 
greater than that of rectifying our bungling and 
speeding our belated tasks in material prepara- 
tions for war, huge as the latter need is. For 
they assail the minds and souls of our people — 
the spirit of the nation — apart from which our 
man-power, money, munitions and ships to con- 
vey all overseas, will prove of little avail. As 
Judge Hughes recently declared, we greatly 
need to give immediate and vigorous attention 
to psychological preparedness for winning the 
war. The Americans to whom we refer menace 
this more perilously than any agents Germany 
can muster among us. 

There are two classes of these dangerous 
Americans. Neither of them is intentionally or 
even knowingly hostile to our country's cause. 
Both, rather, are in a distinctly pathological 
state of mind — by which a physician means, 
showing symptoms resulting from unhealthy 
136 



RISING TO THE HEROIC MOOD 

conditions. One class is abnormally optimistic. 
They are hectic in their unconcern and cheerful- 
ness. They simply will not see the dire facts, 
will not cease indulging in the idea that there is 
no need of their taking any radical action. 
They thus lull the aroused anxieties of those 
about them and delude them into a neghgence 
sure to prove fatal. The other class is com- 
posed of victims of minds detoned, ungirt by 
lowered vitahty, morbid. They are fatally pes- 
simistic. They are stripped of that triumph 
over distressing facts in which Tennyson re- 
joiced — the triumph of not being " left with 
the palsied heart, and with the jaundiced eye." 
Such persons see that vast and priceless trea- 
sures are at stake in the present struggle; they 
realize the ominous situation now overseas; they 
are awed bj^ reports of German achievements 
and of our own muddhng in getting ready. And 
then — then they themselves slump, weakly 
completing the situation they deplore! They 
talk their despondency. They thus sap the na- 
tion's strength of spirit which alone can em- 
power it to safeguard the imperilled treasures 
by going victoriously into the critical situation 
abroad — cravenly betray the nation which 
they, by all the sanctities of American life, and 
they onl}'', can empower to meet the crisis which 
America must now master or else lose her God- 
given Hght and lower her flag in wretched 
gloom. 

137 



WAR-TIME "OVER HERE" 

Everj'^ American ought to rouse himself against 
yielding to either of these deadly maladies, in 
others or in himself. The issues in this war are 
great indeed, the situation just now most critical. 
Therefore, throw off ease; go to it to help win. 
On the other hand, because the issues are so 
great and the situation so black, your personal 
reaction as a citizen of the foremost free nation 
should be the more bounding and courageously 
resolute. Every man of us, every woman, every 
boy and girl in America, should rise to the heroic 
mood from this day forward. Spurn self-delud- 
ing ease. Spurn, too, the utter treachery of de- 
pressed and depressing talk or action. " We 
can, if we will — and we will," is a famous say- 
ing which every American must make his watch- 
word, his slogan, through good or ill, until this 
war is won. Colonel Roosevelt has put the 
truth for the times into words of glowing clear- 
ness: "It is by no means necessary that a 
great nation should always stand at the heroic 
level. But no nation has the root of greatness 
in it unless in time of need it can rise to the 
heroic mood." 



138 



XLIX 

THE SERVICE FLAG 

"A child's pure eyes can mirror more 

Than world- worn hearts are apt to see! " 
So thought I, when a passing friend 
This story left with me. 

A neighbor's little one looked out, 
As evening shadows filled the room, 

Beneath a one-star service flag 
Against the window's gloom. 

The prattler spied the evening star 
Where red still bordered paling blue. 
"Oh, mother, look! " he called, "God's hung 
His service flag up, too! " 

One mother hand caressed their flag; 

The other toyed with flaxen hair; 
Her lips then gave her child a kiss — 

They gave her God a prayer. 

And then, " Yes, dear," the mother sighed. 
Ere long she cheered her voice to say : 
"God let His Son leave home for us — 
For Him our John's away." 

A child's pure eyes can mirror more 
Than world-worn hearts are apt to see; 

But sorrow-deepened souls alone 
Discern life's sanctity. 
139 



n 



J. 




:it.«» 






^""^ 1 
^.. ..^V^^^^V y.:k-i:..% ^^\^^;^*^^ 








A 



^^'\ • 












• <V 











^- ••"\>^°' ,.. ^"K^.""" A^ -" '•^- 



' .^^^•V 



4.-^ '^<^ --^sug^^/ ^^^ \ ^: 








<. *'Tr;* ^( 



r o «» " • . *<<»* n^ .«■'•-» '^o A* » " • * ^_>. 









4 O •" 








,*' 






".:^%^,' *'^"% -.^^p;-" ^«^^"\ -'''*^^-' 

-^ 

4 O * 



» • " ^»^ ^$> • I ■>' O,^ O, •',„o 

DOBBS BROS. t,,V- , , „ V'^ , V ... "^ 

*" ''^/ .•^^'". "w" .'life'- \.^ 






T!^ST. AUGUSTINE .^"^ 



